The Last September Part 20

He waited. The dining-room door swung open on a continued argument; they came out one by one, each, on the threshold, balanced a moment like a ball on a fountain by the shock of seeing him there. "Lady Naylor?" he said to Francie. "Oh, no-" She seemed appalled at the supposition. "Isn't ... Mr. Lesworth here?" "Not today." Lady Naylor came last and stared hardest: really, the Army seemed to be inexhaustible. "Oh no-" she said quickly, as though to prevent something. He told her the circ.u.mstances. "Oh-no," she repeated, and turned in appeal to her husband. "That is ... that is too bad," said Sir Richard and in despairing confusion touched her shoulder. He looked back into the dining-room at the chairs and plates and table, incredible in their survival.

The fact was, they did not at all care for the look of Mr. Daventry. They felt instinctively that he had come here to search the house. Lady Naylor, still statuesque from the shock, made, even, a little disdainful gesture, a kind of: "Here's everything." He, unconscious of her impression of being brought to book, remained staring darkly and piercingly past her. Behind her, across the dark dining-room, he saw through a window the lawn striped with mist and suns.h.i.+ne. In Clonmore it had rained that morning: they seemed to have escaped that too. She said sharply: "Where's Lois?"

"I'm afraid I don't know," he replied, indifferent.

"She-you have-?"

"Oh yes."

Her defence dropped; she said with heart-broken eyes on his face: "You know, we knew him so well. He came out here so often to tennis. It seems queer that one can't-that one never- He was so-"

"Yes, he was, wasn't he?"

"His mother, he used to tell me about his mother. Who will write? I should like to write to her. Yes, I want very much to write to her. I think she might like -we did know him so well, you see-Richard, don't you think I-?"

But Sir Richard had slipped away quietly; he was an old man, really, outside all this, and did not know what to do. He was wondering also, about the Connors. Peter Connor's friends: they knew everything, they were persistent: it did not do to imagine... .

Mr. Daventry said that was all, he thought; he must go now. He took leave with unfriendly courtesy and went off abruptly, with an air that obliterated them, as though he had never been into their house at all. Then she exclaimed, recollecting herself: "He must be unhappy; I ought to have said something." There was so much to do now, more than would fit into a morning; she had some idea of postponing lunch. And hearing the postman, she half thought, terrified by a sense of exposure: "Suppose there should be a-suppose he should have-"

But there was no letter for Lois from Gerald.

No one was on the steps to hear the news from the postman; he went away disappointed. Lady Naylor thought firmly: "Now I must go and find Lois." But she did not go; things seemed to delay her. She looked into the drawing-room to see whether something-she wasn't certain what-was there. Francie, red-eyed, looked guilty over the back of the sofa. They did not say anything. The room became so sharply painful that Lady Naylor almost exclaimed: "Lois has not done the flowers!"

It was Laurence who, walking about the grounds unguardedly, was exposed to what they all dreaded. He came on Lois, standing beside a holly tree. She could have moved away, but seemed not so much rooted as indifferent.

"It's all right," she explained, and added: "I'm just thinking."

His look became almost personal, as though he had recognised her. He said: "I think I should. I expect- I don't know-one probably gets past things."

"But look here, there are things that one can't-" (She meant: He loved me, he believed in the British Empire.) "At least, I don't want to."

"Perhaps you are right," he admitted, studying, with an effort of sight and of comprehension, some unfamiliar landscape.

"Well, don't stop, Laurence. You're going somewhere, aren't you?"

"Nowhere particular. Not if you-"

"No, I don't specially. Though if it has to be anyone, you."

Taking this for what it was worth, he went on; brus.h.i.+ng awkwardly past her against the laurels.

A fortnight later, Mrs. Trent drove over, the very evening of her return from the North. She had been inexpressibly bored up there and wished to complain. Lady Naylor, delighted, came out to meet her; it was like old times again.

"The house feels empty. They've gone, you know."

"Yes, dear me. I was sorry not to have seen the last of Hugo and poor little Francie. What about their bungalow?"

"Oh, that was just an idea; they are quite off it. Bungalows inland seem so pointless, cliffs are so windy and one cannot live on a flat coast. No, they think now of going to Madeira."

"Then they won't unstore the furniture?"

"I don't think so; they never cared for it much."

"It's a pity he never did go to Canada." Mrs. Trent looked round at the pleasant fields and lawns, the trees ma.s.sive and tarnished, the windows that from their now settled emptiness seemed to have gained composure. Her sense of home-coming extended even to Danielstown. She went on: "How's Richard? And listen: are you getting in your apples?-we haven't begun. They never seem to do anything while I'm away. And tell me; how's Lois?"

"Oh, gone, you know."

"Gone? Oh, the school of art!"

"Oh, no," said Lady Naylor, surprised. "Tours. For her French, you know. And to such an interesting, cultivated family; she is really fortunate. I never have been happy about her French. As I said to her, there will be plenty of time for Italian."

"Oh, that's splendid," Mrs. Trent said vaguely but warmly. "Then of course you must feel quiet. She and Laurence travel over together?"

"She seemed so offended at being thought incompetent and he was worried at the idea of looking after her luggage, so we sent them over separately; he crossed Wednesday, she Friday. Both nights, I hear, it was rough ... Yes, it's been sad here, lately; we've been so much shocked and distressed about that unfortunate young Lesworth. I think I felt it particularly; he had been out here so much and seemed so glad to talk, and had come, in a way, to depend on one. Though it was a shock, too, for Lois. You see they had really played tennis so often and were beginning to be quite friends. She did not take it as hard as I feared, girls of her generation seem less sensitive, really ... I don't know, perhaps that is all for the best. And of course she has so many interests. But it was terrible, wasn't it? I still think: how terrible- But he did have a happy life. I wrote that to his mother; I said, it must always be some consolation to think how happy his life had been. He quite beamed, really; he was the life and soul of everything. And she wrote back--I did not think tactfully, but of course she would be distressed -that it was her first consolation to think he died in so n.o.ble a cause."

Mrs. Trent had for a moment an uneasy, exposed look. She said: "It was heroic," and glanced down awkwardly at her gloves. She missed a dog, she felt unstayed, there was no dog.

"Heroic," said Lady Naylor, and scanned the skies with eager big-pupilled eyes that reflected the calm light. "Although," she added, half in surprise, "he could not help it. But come in now and tell Richard about the North, he will be amused, though sorry that you were dull. To tell you the truth, we both rather feared you might be. Ah, don't mind the time, I'm sure it's early; come in, come in!"

But Mrs. Trent could not; she was a punctilious person and wore a wrist-watch. She had not even sent round her dog-cart to the back; a man was walking the cob up and down the avenue. "A flying visit," said Lady Naylor mournfully, having prolonged the conversation by half an hour. Then Mrs. Trent climbed briskly into the dog-cart and gathered the reins up; they sighed at each other their resignation at parting.

"Then we see you on Tuesday. Be sure and come early, before the Hartigans." To the domestic landscape, Mrs. Trent nodded an approving farewell. "Every autumn, it strikes me this place looks really its best."

"To tell you the truth, I really believe it does. There is something in autumn," said Lady Naylor. She remained on the steps looking after the trap, her hands restlessly, lightly folded. Some leaves spun down from the gate with a home-coming air.

The two did not, however, again see Danielstown at such a moment, such a particular happy point of decline in the short curve of the day, the long curve of the season. Here, there were no more autumns, except for the trees. By next year light had possessed itself of the vacancy, still with surprise. Next year, the chestnuts and acorns pattered unheard on the avenues, that, filmed over with green already, should have been dull to the footsteps-but there were no footsteps. Leaves, fluttering down the slope with the wind's hesitation, banked formless, frightened, against the too clear form of the ruin.

For in February, before those leaves had visibly budded, the death-the execution, rather-of the three houses, Danielstown, Castle Trent, Mount Isabel, occurred in the same night. A fearful scarlet ate up the hard spring darkness; indeed, it seemed that an extra day, unreckoned, had come to abortive birth that these things might happen. It seemed, looking from east to west at the sky tall with scarlet, that the country itself was burning; while to the north the neck of mountain before Mount Isabel was frightfully outlined. The roads in unnatural dusk ran dark with movement, secretive or terrified; not a tree, brushed pale by wind from the flames, not a cabin pressed in despair to the bosom of night, not a gate too starkly visible but had its place in the design of order and panic. At Danielstown, half way up the avenue under the beeches, the thin iron gate tw.a.n.ged (missed its latch, remained swinging aghast) as the last unlit car slid out with the executioners bland from accomplished duty. The sound of the last car widened, gave itself to the open and empty country and was demolished. Then the first wave of a silence that was to be ultimate flowed back confidently to the steps. The door stood open hospitably upon a furnace.

Sir Richard and Lady Naylor, not saying anything, did not look at each other, for in the light from the sky they saw too distinctly.

end.