The Last September Part 6

Marda laughed; she got up and stood on the steps. Fixed in their row, the others all looked up at her. She was tall, her back as she stood looking over the fields was like a young man's in its vigorous slightness. She escaped the feminine pear-shape, her shoulders were square, legs long from the knee down. Her light brown dress slipped and fitted with careless accuracy, defining spareness negatively under its slack folds. Sophistication opened further horizons to Lois. Marda gathered her strung cornelians in one hand into a bunch at her throat; they slipped down the nape of her neck. Standing vaguely she had still that quality of directedness-from which they all swerved off in their different ways. A hardy unawareness of self in her heightened one's own consciousness. Her lightest look watched, her casual listening a.s.sessed, her speech was a lightning attack on one's integrity out of the stronghold of her indifference.

They remained sitting behind her with a vague sensation of having been abandoned. Hugo came out, shut the gla.s.s door with precision and blinked at the sky. "Clearing," he said, then asked Marda to come for a turn. Exercise seemed the order of the morning; Lois and Laurence were later to go to the village with messages, Francie was waiting to go to the garden with Lady Naylor.

"Am I or am I not to drive her?" wondered Laurence aloud, with fatalism, looking after Miss Norton.

"She'll certainly let you know." Francie's little ironical smile sent her cheeks up, their faint flush wavering, under her eyes. She was not so simple. Her diffidence, her inquiring softness, an outward "laci-ness" of her personality-into which impressions seemingly filtered like light, diffusedly, making no impact -covered a structure of delicate hardness. She was in spirit insistent, tenacious and quick in antagonisms; complexity tightened, as had been her delicate body's, by constant resistance to pain. She gave hospitality to the ever-living Laura, she invited claims from Mrs. Archie Trent, she would have endowed Lois, but she watched Marda turn beside Hugo into the beech walk with raised brows, a cat's blank unsparing lucidity.

"She's very positive," said Laurence, still looking after them.

"Positive about what?" asked Lois eagerly. Laurence held his breath with annoyance and pulled up a sock.

Marda wanted nothing of Mr. Montmorency but entertainment; she was an experienced fellow visitor. He interested her; his negativeness was startling. She had heard of him, and of it, in all parts of the country, had arrived at several houses into a loud reaction, a kind of indignant excitement following his departure. Her acquiescence in finding him so exactly as he had been described was tempered by incredulity, almost shock. And she could define in him qualities which her friends in the rush of discussion had slurred or had overshot: one, a kind of drawn-back apprehension in his approaches, as though something bright were being brandished before his eyes. His look, coming wavering round this interruption, had, in regard to herself, a peculiar intensity. She was already real to him as a woman.

He now swung his blackthorn, slas.h.i.+ng the air widely. "I remember this walk," she said. "I seem to have been here yesterday. But I thought it was somewhere in Kerry, at Castle Reagh."

"Oh, no, it is here," he said wisely. They laughed. Down the walk, brightening air slipped like gauze round the beech trunks; great pewter limbs went turning, straining up with the sheen of muscles. Drops, infrequent and startling, loudly fell on his hat-brim, icily on her shoulders through the mesh of her dress, The path's perspective was a tunnel of gla.s.s. Her companion's lameness of thought, the faltering silence produced a kind of vacuum in her; she covered a yawn.

"This is not a good morning," he suggested, "to walk under trees."

"Really the worst possible."

"Oh ... had we better-?" However, they walked on.

"I always come here," he said in extenuation. "My turn to the right's mechanical. I was here as a boy, you know."

"Were you here when I bled so much at that children's party?"

"Not actually, but I have always heard of it. Didn't you lose a ring?"

"At another party, at a more suitable age. It was the most lovely ring I have ever had-Regent Street. The jeweller said it must be emeralds because the lady was Irish, and Timothy fully agreed with him. I had had no idea I had such an expensive nationality."

"What a pity!"

"Yes, those things are always a pity."

He was not sure how much she included. "Did your-did Timothy mind?"

"Not so much as the Naylors. Later, he was killed on the Somme. But he had two sons first, so it all came right-I mean, he married."

"Oh, yes ... I suppose you are often here? I have often heard of you. And at Johnstone and up in the North I have heard you expected. But I was always going. Once I believe we crossed at an avenue gate."

The fact was, she acknowledged with a laugh, that they both visited incorrigibly. She knew also, she told him, that he not only visited but travelled; he had been almost everywhere but Canada.

"But I really should not have come back here," she said. "There is something in Lady Naylor's eye: a despairing optimism. I feel that suitcase won't be the end of me here. There will be a raid and I shall be shot on the avenue, not even fatally, or Laurence will take me out and upset that car. Then really she will never forgive me, though the efforts she makes will follow me over Europe ... How far do you think this war is going to go? Will there ever be anything we can all do except not notice?"

"Don't ask me," he said, but sighed sharply as though beneath the pressure of omniscience. "A few more hundred deaths, I suppose, on our side-which is no side-rather scared, rather isolated, not expressing anything except tenacity to something that isn't there-that never was there. And deprived of heroism by this wet kind of smother of commiseration. What's the matter with this country is the matter with the lot of us individually-our sense of personality is a sense of outrage and we'll never get outside of it."

But the hold of the country was that, she considered; it could be thought of in terms of oneself, so interpreted. Or seemed so-"Like Shakespeare," she added more vaguely, "or isn't it? ... But now tell me," she said, "about Lois."

"Lois?" He was guiltily startled, thinking of Laura's daughter.

"Lois-haven't you noticed her? She sits beside you at dinner."

He feared he was no good at people, he was preparing to say-but the remark tried over critically seemed a kind of echo: he reminded himself of Laurence. He was confused by her cool watching, her eyebrows drawn up and together in a friendly despair at him. Her face-like a Dutch doll's, he defensively told himself, in its accurate clear disposition of red-and-white colour-was, at this sudden pull-up to her interest, like a mask in its halt of expression. Her features, the dark line of hair springing over the white square of forehead were, in their special relation, like something almost too clearly written that he still could not read; to be learnt now and puzzled over in retrospect.

She was, in fact, repelled by his lack of sympathy. "Lois," she said, "is nice. She is in such a hurry, so concentrated upon her hurry, so helpless. She is like someone being driven against time in a taxi to catch a train, jerking and jerking to help the taxi along and looking wildly out of the window at things going slowly past. She keeps hearing that final train go out without her. How I should hate to be young again! But, I had no ambition."

He watched her unguarded profile. "Oh, yes," he said, "ambition."

"I've never met any woman so determined to love well, so anxious to love soon, so certain of her ability. She really prays for somebody to be fatal; she eyes doors. And you are all disappointments."

"To begin with," said Hugo, nettled, "she's not a woman-"

"Awful if nothing happens to her! She reminds me, too, of a little girl I remember at school sports; in a team race, one of those things with bean bags. Hopping at the end of the line, working up to the front slowly, simply sick with eagerness. Her turn comes, she is the whole world: her eyes shoot out of her head- she drops the bean bag. They all groan ... It makes me go dry inside to think of it now."

"There is a young man-Harold-Gerald. They dance on the avenue."

"Like rabbits?"

"They have a gramophone."

"Is he supposed to love her?"

"My wife thinks so. Laurence considers he suitably might. Her aunt does not think it suitable at all and won't hear a word of it, so he officially doesn't."

"Anyhow, to be loved is not her affair at all, it is quite irrelevant. If she does not love him, poor little thing, he is useless."

"I can't think it necessary for a young girl, at her age, to love anybody."

"Oh, it is not," she said impatiently, "at any age. But one has those ideas."

This dismissal, this lightness vexed him. Let her speak for herself. She had, then, her whole s.e.x's limitations: a teachable shallowness, a hundred litde abilities. But he, prey to a constant self-reproach, was a born lover; conscious of cycles in him, springs and autumns of desire and disenchantment, and of the intermediate pausing seasons, bland or frigid, eaten at either margin by the past or coming shadows of change.

"I have not these ideas," he said coldly.

They turned at the end of the walk through a gateway into a fir plantation. Here they walked between walls of dusk, to be released into an airy green s.p.a.ce, tree-pillared. The green strip, measureless on ahead but narrow, slanted on their left to the open meadows, on their right was bounded by a broken wall. Below the wall an unseen swift stream flowed, tinkling and knocking. The path hesitated ahead of them, faint on the turf. Here the few beeches stood unrelated, lovely, desultory: between their trunks-the tall mountains, vivid in a suffusion of distant light. The scene glittered. "More rain coming," said Mr. Montmorency.

But she stared ahead. A trench-coat flickered between the trees, approaching. Her look focused; there was an interchange. Coming to them, the young man almost hurried. After consideration: "Hullo!" said Mr. Montmorency.

"Hal-lo!" cried Gerald, flas.h.i.+ng with expectation. Never had they been so acclaimed. He was out this way, he explained coming into earshot, and was proposing to take advantage of something rash that Lady Naylor had once said about dropping in to lunch any time. "They're not out?" he asked suddenly with, Marda noticed, a queer haggardness. They were not? That was splendid, marvellous. Early about?-he had been out all night, he told them. Oh, yes-feeling Mr. Montmorency glance at his chin interrogatively-he had shaved by the road; he had brought his tackle with him, he often did. Here-no, that was his pistol: the other pocket. Marda extolled his foresight. Mr. Montmorency had forgotten to introduce them; they stood socially grouped round a beech and exchanged cigarettes.

"Very busy now?" said Marda, bending to the match Gerald sheltered.

"Off and on-generally on, but we don't know." She really seemed most remarkable; he looked intently, just lightly enough to avoid a stare. He liked talk like this, square and facty, compact with a.s.sumptions. Pleasant that she should be here at the house for lunch. Light slipped up the dints in her hair as she looked up again. Lunch seemed a torch in the future; between now and lunch time he would have come on Lois, somewhere, somehow, and amazingly kissed her amazed hands. There would be, till the kiss, no speaking-there she eluded him. He had thought this out.

He had thought this out-seen ahead to this climax rather, as though a flower's centre had been revealed by an impetuous opening-out of lovely confused petals-on the lorry, breasting the darkness. Watching the morning skylines form and creep out like enemies from the cold night, he had burned at her nearness under the insistent groping of the wind. Rus.h.i.+ng under his eyes the hedges s.h.i.+vered; he had laughed and s.h.i.+vered, a hand in his pistol pocket, hand on his razor. And now as, looking at Marda, he once more kissed Lois's hands, he knew once more-a.s.sured by her eyes-that keen truth of the early showing of daylight. He was fortified in a.s.surance. Leaning with her elbow against the tree, returning casually his directness of look, she recalled some lovely certain excitement, as of his first approach to the War. Now he meant to go past the hands, to kiss the curve of Lois's cheek as she strained away, then stamp her uncertain mouth with his own certainty. Naively, he looked at his wrist-watch.

"Yes, go on," she said, looking up through the tree where a bright breath disturbed the closeness. He looked past her, the path led to Lois. This green open path s.p.a.ced out with trees had (he afterwards thought) a place in heaven.

"It will rain by lunch time," said Mr. Montmorency. And indeed the sky was already creeping together and fading; the mountains' sharpness seemed a kind of anxiety.

"I wish," said Gerald to Marda, "you'd been out up there this morning. You wouldn't know where you were, with the light coming."

"Is there a smell of daylight? I once heard a man say-"

"Well, that is just like me-I was smoking."

"Look, you must go on."

"Yes, perhaps-" He went on. She was left only half protected by irony from an inrush of desolation. His look and smile clung to her memory with the tenacity of irrelevance; his steps on the gra.s.s died out quickly. There was silence: a cold apprehension of rain in the beeches, the tinkling and knocking of water beyond the wall. Hugo, having walked a short way ahead, looked back at her sharply. She was startled. "Bother!" she thought. For there was bother behind the look.

"Do we go on?" They walked on, but were oppressed by their lack of objective. They met the white stare of a cottage, stared and turned.

"Danny Regan lives there: he shot out an eye shooting rabbits and now he's losing the sight of the other. I used to go out with him when I was a boy-so high. His mother lives with him-or should still; I haven't heard that she's gone. She must be a hundred-and-four."

"Do you know the man I am going to marry, Leslie Lawe? He's a stockbroker; he fishes a good deal. His people are in Meath."

"Meath? ... I didn't know you-"

"I am really. I haven't told the Naylors. They think my engagements fantastic; you see, they have all come to nothing. But I ought to have told the Naylors; it ought to have come at once but there was that wretched suitcase. I will say something at dinner, not lunch: please do something to lessen the atmosphere of surprise."

"When?"

"Oh, we think this winter."

He looked from one window of the cottage to the other. "It will make a break in the winter," he said at last, "I daresay you will go somewhere sunny. Algiers perhaps-Morocco, if you are able."

"Yes, he is quite rich."

"I shouldn't go to the Riviera ... But I thought you didn't believe in this sort of thing?"

"I? Oh, I never said so."

Now he came to think of it, she had not explicitly said so. "I hope you will be happy."

"I don't expect I shall be much different."

"I think," he said, "I must go in and talk to Danny ... He will have heard I'm back. It seems a good time now--do you mind?"

"I'll talk to Mrs. Regan."

"She's deaf."

"Then we'll smile at each other-she's not blind."

They approached the doorway that yearned up the path like an eye-socket. A breath of peat-smoke, of cold trodden earth, of the ghostly dark of white walls came out from the cottage. Danny took form on the darkness, searching with his one eye. He stood with his white beard, helpless and eager. "Well!" exclaimed Hugo. Then Danny broke out: this was young Mr. Hugo, wasn't he the lovely gentleman, as fine and upstanding as ever. And here was his wife he'd brought with him, the beautiful lady. And, trembling and searching, he took Marda's hand. He declared that she brought back the sight of youth to his eyes.

CHAPTER THREE.

IT rained before lunch time; Gerald heard loud drops come after him as he went up the beech walk. Under every beech he expected to see Lois, looking round in surprise. When he heard a dog in the undergrowth he turned, laughing with expectation. But it was the louche yellow dog from the lodge, intent on rabbiting. Soon a square black eye of the house- three-four-looked down at him through the branches; he came out under the whole cold sh.e.l.l of it, streaked with rain and hollow-looking from interior darkness. The yellow dog pa.s.sed, looked back scornfully from the steps and pattered in at the door with an air of possession. "Hallo?" called Gerald, looking about him.

But she was nowhere; the place was cold with her absence and seemed forgotten. The tennis party became a dream-parasols with their coloured suns.h.i.+ne, rugs spread, s.h.i.+mmer of midges, amiable compet.i.tion of voices. Something had now been wiped from the place with implied finality. Gerald told himself it was all very queer, quite; that it was disappointing about Lois. He tugged the bell, a maid appeared in surprise, did her back hair hastily, encouraged him in with a smile and left him. The hall with its staring portraits contracted round a glove on the table-a grey suede gauntlet strapped at the wrist-he picked up the glove and kissed it. But the house was full of ladies, the glove might as well be Marda's-he dropped it doubtfully.

A lovely mystery of feminine life: what did a young girl do with herself in the mornings? Vaguely he pictured keyboards and pink ambling fingers. He recollected those sage-green s.e.xless covers of intellectual books. He recalled the musty smell of work-boxes, the flush through transparent paper of sh.e.l.l-pink needlework hastily wrapped away. You never asked a girl what she was making.

He listened, took off his trench-coat, stepped to the drawing-room door. The five tall windows stood open on rain and the sound of leaves, rain stuttered along the sills, the grey of the mirrors s.h.i.+vered. Polished tables were cold little lakes of light. A smell of sandalwood boxes, a kind of glaze on the air from all the chintzes numbed his earthy vitality, he became all ribs and uniform. He was aware of intrusion. But he dared not go in unasked to the library, where Sir Richard might well look up from writing, sharp with pince-nez. He could not again face the hall-he was shy of the glove.

He took up the Spectator, read an article on Unrest and thought of the Empire. Mechanically his hand went up to his tie. He looked ahead to a time when it should be accurately finally fenced about and all raked over. Then there should be a fixed leisured glow, and relaxation, as on coming in to tea from an afternoon's gardening with his mother, in autumn. He turned in thought to confident English country, days like the look in a dog's eye, rooms small in the scope of firelight, neighbourly lights through trees. He thought of a woman, kind and palpable, who should never produce this ache, this absence ... A door dragged forward its portiere, Lois came in from the dining-room, brus.h.i.+ng rain from her frieze coat. He stood for a moment in a kind of despair at her agitation, as though he were trying to take her photograph. Then he stepped forward and kissed her, his hands on her wet shoulders.

"-Oh but look here-" cried Lois.

But she was his lovely woman: kissed. He shone at her, she helpless. She looked out at the hopeless rain.

"I love-"

"Oh but look here-"

"But I love-"

"What are you doing in the drawing-room?"

"I've come to lunch."

"Do they know?"

"I haven't seen anyone."

"I don't know who to tell," she said distractedly. "They have all disappeared; they always are disappearing. You'd think this was the emptiest house in Ireland-we have no family life. It's no good my telling Brigid because she forgets, and the parlourmaid is always dressing. I suppose I had better lay you a place myself-but I don't know where the knives are kept. I can't think why you are being so sudden all of a sudden, in every way: you never used to be. I haven't even done the flowers yet. I do wish you wouldn't, Gerald-I mean, be so actual. And do be natural at lunch, or I shall look such a goat. You really might have asked me, I never mind talking things over. But now the gong will go at any moment. And how do you know I'm not in love with a married man?"

"You wouldn't be so neurotic, I mean, like a novel. I mean: do be natural, Lois."

"Don't look so, so inflamed ... Miss Norton is here, she's a girl-at least a kind of a girl. She's awfully attractive."

"I think I met her. She's awfully--well, not beautiful, but...Oh, Lois. ..."

"Do be normal: do play the piano."

"I can't start playing the piano before I've even told them I've come to lunch. I may be musical, Lois, but I'm not artistic."

"All right," she said, and walked away from him round the room. So that was being kissed: just an impact, with inside blankness. She was lonely, and saw there was no future. She shut her eyes and tried-as sometimes when she was seasick, locked in misery between Holyhead and Kingstown-to be enclosed in nonent.i.ty, in some ideal no-place perfect and clear as a bubble. Or she was at a party, unreal and vivid, or running on hard sands. "It wouldn't have mattered so much at the seaside," she said to Gerald.

"But we never are at the seaside."