THE ARRIVAL OF MR. AND MRS. MONTMORENCY (continued 2)

“I can’t think of any,” said Mrs. Carey, accepting another cup of tea. She smiled and nodded across the table to Mrs. Archie Trent, who had just come in. “We have been much more worried lately by people taking away our car. Of course it is always brought back again, but one doesn’t like to think of its being used for nefarious purposes. That is the worst of a Ford.”

Mrs. Vermont opened her mouth to tell Mrs. Carey the latest Ford story, then checked herself because in Ireland they seemed to take Fords so seriously. She observed instead: “All this is terrible for you all, isn’t it? I do think you’re so sporting the way you just stay where you are and keep going on. Who would ever have thought the Irish would turn out so disloyal—I mean, of course, the lower classes! I remember Mother saying in 1916—you know, when that dreadful rebellion broke out—she said: ‘This has been a shock to me, I never shall feel the same about the Irish again.’ You see, she had brought us all up as kiddies to be so keen on the Irish, and Irish songs. I still have a little bog-oak pig she brought me back from an exhibition. She always said they were the most humorous people in the world, and with hearts of gold. Though of course we had none of us ever been in Ireland.”

“Well, I hope you are pleased with us now you have come,” said Mrs. Carey hospitably. “I expect you have all been enjoying this lovely weather?”

“Oh, well—you see, we didn’t come over to enjoy ourselves, did we? We came to take care of all of you—and, of course, we are ever so glad to be able to do it. Not that I don’t like the country; it’s so picturesque with those darling mountains and the hens running in and out of the cottages just the way Mother always said. But, you see, one can’t help worrying all the time about Timmie—my husband—and all the boys: out all night sometimes with the patrols or else off in the mountains.”

“Terrible. And do you find this a tiring climate?”

A word attracted Mrs. Trent’s attention across the table. “Terrible what?” she said. “Terrible who?” She was youngish, brusque and dominant; the high pink colour over her face as from riding hard in a wind gave her a look of zestfulness alarming to Mrs. Vermont. “I shouldn’t worry,” she said to Mrs. Vermont.

Mrs. Vermont replied with a shade of asperity that it was they who were in a position to worry and therefore must not. “’Cause we’re here to take care of you!” The remark, caught in a momentary silence around the table, was received with civility and attention. “That’s splendid!” said Mrs. Trent heartily. She got up, having finished her tea rapidly and went to smoke outside. Her husband was M.F.H. and really, thought Mrs. Vermont, they did not seem to worry about anything but wire. Mrs. Vermont turned for support to David; his ears were scarlet, he rapidly stirred his tea.

Five days ago, an R.I.C. barracks at Ballydrum had been attacked and burnt out after a long defence. Two of the defenders were burnt inside it, the others shot coming out. The wires were cut, the roads blocked; there had been no one to send for help, so there was no help for them. It was this they had all been discussing, at tea, between tennis: “the horrible thing.” No one could quite understand why Captain Vermont and the subalterns did not seem more appalled and interested. It was not apparent how the subject rasped on their sensibilities. These things happened, were deplored and accepted, and still no one seemed to look on David or Gerald, Smith, Carmichael or Mrs. Vermont’s Timmie as a possible remedy. Here they all were, playing tennis, and every one seemed delighted. “If they’d just let us out for a week⁠—” felt the young men. David could not look up as he stirred his tea. What was the good of them? This, he felt, every one should be wondering. But the party would indeed have been dull without them, there would have been no young men. Nobody wished them elsewhere.

Lois had been worrying chiefly because Gerald had illusions about her, also, as to whether Aunt Myra noticed the raspberries still would not go round. The guests for which she was responsible were not only unexpected but ravenous. And while she sat watching Aunt Myra, Gerald sat watching herself as though she were an entirely different person, not the sort of person one could describe at all. After tea she played on the upper court with Captain Vermont, against Gerald and Nona Carey. She played well, all her strokes came off; it seemed that worry agreed with her. It could not agree with Gerald, who played badly. Then it occurred to her: he was not worried; she had not the power to worry him. Some idea he had formed of herself remained inaccessible to her; she could not affect it.

By now the upper court was in shadow, they all flickered against the dark screen of the trees like figures cut out of light green velvet. Below, where hot bands of light still blinded the players, there was a suggestion of strain and violence. Whenever she looked down, Mr. Montmorency seemed to be handing balls to his partner in silent anger. She guessed it must be himself who was playing badly, so that while she could not resist looking down, she had to keep looking away from him just as fast.

“You were splendid,” said Captain Vermont when their set finished.

“Oh no, I wasn’t,” said Lois by reflex action, and wished all the other things to which she was always replying, “Oh no, I didn’t,” or “Oh no, I’m not,” were half as true. And she thought what a pity it was that Mr. Montmorency, instead of exerting himself so fruitlessly, had not been sitting there at the edge of the court to watch her.

She walked down the slope from the court with Gerald beside her. Conscious of many people’s attention, she did not know if she seemed enviable or foolish. “I wish you wouldn’t keep looking so pleased the whole time,” she said to Gerald.

“Oh?... but I am.”

“What at?”

“Well, I love coming over here. I think you have such awfully nice parties.”

“Oh, the party.... But David enjoys them, and he hasn’t got the same expression as you have. In fact, he looks rather sick. What can be the matter?”

“Well, we all feel a little rotten about that barrack.”

“Don’t! Do you know that while that was going on, eight miles off, I was cutting a dress out, a voile that I didn’t even need, and playing the gramophone?... How is it that in this country that ought to be full of such violent realness, there seems nothing for me but clothes and what people say? I might just as well be in some kind of cocoon.”

“But what could you have done? You, you⁠—”

“I might at least have felt something.”

“But you do; you’ve got the most wonderful power of feeling.”

“But you never take in a word I say. You’re not interested when I tell you about myself.”

“You know I could listen all day to you talking.”

She thought: “As though you could make me talk all day!” To cover the thought she said earnestly:

“You think we don’t all understand your not being there in time and not doing anything afterwards? We’re not all such idiots. We know it’s most terribly difficult for you and that you must obey orders. It’s bad luck the orders are silly. It’s all this dreadful idea about self-control. When we do nothing it is out of politeness, but England is so moral, so dreadfully keen on not losing her temper, or being for half a moment not a great deal more noble than anyone else. Can you wonder this country gets irritated? It’s as bad for it as being a woman. I never can see why women shouldn’t be hit, or should be saved from wrecks when everybody complains they’re superfluous.”

“You don’t understand: it would be ghastly if those things went.”

“Why? I don’t see—and I am a woman.”

Which was, of course, exactly why it wasn’t to be expected or desired she should understand. He smiled, too happy to answer, and tore out a handful of leaves from the privet hedge. She had this one limitation, his darling Lois; she couldn’t look on her own eyes, had no idea what she was, resented almost his attention being so constantly fixed on something she wasn’t aware of. A fellow did not expect to be to a girl what a girl was to a fellow—this wasn’t modesty, specially, it was an affair of function—so that the girl must be excused for a possible failure in harmony, a sometimes discordant irreverence. When he said: “You will never know what you mean to me,” he made plain his belief in her perfection as a woman. She wasn’t made to know, she was not fit for it. She was his integrity, of which he might speak to strangers but of which to her he would never speak.

He tore out another handful of leaves from the hedge and scattered them carefully over the grass. They both laughed.

She was thinking: “When next I write to Viola, can I describe him?” Viola flashed off her men in a phrase, with a sweep of her red quill pen. The red pen had leaned from the Chinese inkpot, against the window, like a thin flame, a leaning flamingo on that day’s sunny mist in the Westminster street. It remained a picture of their intercourse. They had said good-bye in December, a slight day, anxious between the enormous past and future. The parting was hardly real, they had barely kissed. They were impatient, nervous, waiting for the curtain to rise. They had just left school.

They had left school the day before. Yet the new life had been impatient for Viola, drawing her away from Lois in the taxi, appropriating her with certainty. She had stepped from their taxi toppling with school trunks with a kind of solemnity, as on to a carpet stretched for her festal approach from the kerb to the doors of her home. Next day, when they said good-bye, her hair was in place already, woven into her personality. Her pigtail had been the one loose end there was of her, an extension of her that had independence, a puppyish walloping thing with nerves of its own. Now the hair was woven in bright sleek circles over her ears, each strand round like an eel’s body. The effect completed her; Lois knew she had been missing or else discounting something all these years. Viola must have played at being a schoolgirl just as Lois would have to play at being a woman. Two expensive young men’s photographs had risen like suns on her mantelpiece; these young men had loved since last Easter holidays; their position was now regularized magically by the putting up of Viola’s hair. For only little commonalities, she declared, had affairs while still at school. And Lois, after that good-bye so distinct and distant, as at the little end of a telescope, had left her with the composed, knowing photographs and the red pen leaning against the sunshine. She had wondered, going out to a day of shopping and the night mail to be caught at Euston, whether life was to hold for her, too, a man’s passion; and if so, when? And she had bought a dozen pairs of silk stockings and the black georgette Aunt Myra said was “old.”

But a man’s passion was not at all the thing. My dear, too Dell-ish! Viola went to what she supposed one would call her first ball; in tulle she went, smoke blue, with a close gold-leaf round the hair—not bright gold, dull gold. Various people had seemed intrigued, were in fact intrigued rather definitely. There was So-and-so, an absurd person (flash of the red pen), and the aloof, rather mask-like So-and-so—who might intrigue Lois. But when it came to So-and-so (a most brilliant flash of the pen) Viola would admit to Lois she was affected: it really had been affecting. But enough of Viola. “Now, Lois darling, you must tell me about them all: I must know everybody.”

And there arose, recurrently, the difficulty in describing Gerald. Who else had been intrigued, Lois was not certain. How much was somebody intrigued when they wished to sit out in a car in the barrack square for four dances? Might not Viola consider sitting out in a car at all rather Dell-ish? When some one tried to kiss you with whisky-ish breath, how much were they intrigued and how much was whisky? She thought a major proposed to her, though he seemed rather old, but he was so much confused and had such a mumbly moustache she could not be certain. And later on at the Clonmore Club a lady was pointed out to her as, she was almost certain, that major’s wife. David had seemed intrigued, but then he himself intrigued Livvy so very definitely and did not a young man under these conditions become slightly sordid? So Lois became so very general in her references that Viola was suspicious: she asked, was there really anyone? Then she began to write in a married-womanish tone of encouragement, which considering she could be married at any moment was really justified. Lois was forced to state, there was a man in the Rutlands, a Gerald Lesworth, whom she found affecting. She supposed there was no question as to his being intrigued; people seemed to notice. So Viola wrote back, she must hear all about him, should have heard before: her Lol was really the final Sphinx. She wanted to know, to see, to hear him, even to smell him—because all the nicest men did smell, didn’t they, indefinably but divinely. One noticed it when one was dancing or, sometimes, sitting out. So now, please, everything; by return.

Viola did not like moustaches, but some men did qualify their moustaches, surely? Gerald’s lay like a fine dark shadow, so that his lip seemed to curl up more than it did. It answered his eyebrows somehow—that had a way of drawing together while he spoke—and some soft edgeless darkness about his eyes. If one mentioned his teeth so white that his smile seemed a long slow flash in the tanned face, didn’t it make him sound like Fairbanks? For he was not, at all. He had a way of looking down while he spoke, as though his thoughts were under his eyelids. From his look she had sometimes turned in impatience, never in discomfort. There was emotion there unclothed in the demi-decency of thought; nakedness, not a suggestive deshabille. If he was looking away and one spoke, his eyes returned with an extraordinary look of welcome. He had a good chin, cut sharply away underneath with a strong shadow. His head was pleasant with bumps, that made planes of light and shadow over his polished hair. And she knew she liked something about the back of his neck: it was a personal neck—not just a connection, an isthmus—with skin fitting closely over the muscles.

As she stood looking at Gerald by the privet hedge, he emerged from the mist of familiarity, clear to her mental eye. She saw him as though for the first time, with a quick response to his beauty; she saw him as though he were dead, as though she had lost him, with the pang of an evocation. While she could hold him thus—before he receded or came too closely forward—she wanted to run indoors and write to Viola. Viola would be certain to tell her she loved him, and by that declaration, to be expressed with vigour, Lois was too certain to be affected. She was afraid at the thought of it.

She would have loved to love him; she felt some kind of wistfulness, some deprivation. If there could only be some change, some movement—in her, outside of her, somewhere between them—some incalculable shifting of perspectives that would bring him wholly into focus, mind and spirit, as she had been bodily in focus now—she could love him. Something must be transmuted.... Or else, possibly, if he would not love her so, could give her air to grow in, not stifle imagination.

He said: “What’s the matter? Bothered?”

“Thinking—about you, in a kind of way.”

“Good.”

“I was describing you. How would you describe me?”

He was surprised, he needed time to think of this; he did not know. “I must just go in,” she said—“do you mind?—and write a letter. It’s so important. Will you post it for me at Clonmore?”

But meanwhile, they had been irritating Lady Naylor, who seeing Lois stand so vaguely down by the privet hedge, disclaiming implicitly the party given for her amusement, was goaded to the point of an interruption. Now she called: “Lois—Lois!”

Lois sighed and went to her.

“I want you to take the Trents and Maguires and Boatleys round the garden,” she said as her niece approached. “I shall be coming later”—she murmured: “when some more of the people have gone. Mrs. Trent wants a cutting of the allspice and would like to see if there’s anything else she would like. Tell Donovan.” She murmured again: “And don’t let Mrs. Boatley get with Mrs. Maguire, she is a Christian Scientist and will talk of it, and you know the Maguires’ little nephew died of that. And if the Boatleys like the peaches give them some; let Donovan pack them.” She added in a still lower tone of reproach: “Because I don’t believe there were raspberries for them at tea.”

VII

FRANCIE was finding Laurence not so difficult after all, if one just ran on quite naturally. They sat at the top of the steps together, after everybody had gone. The fields looked wider, the sky more gracious and distant seen through the clearing smoke of social activity. The Trents left last but one, the Hartigans and their aunt Mrs. Foxe-O’Connor had just gone jogging away up the avenue, knee to knee in their little trap. The gravel at the foot of the steps was all scored up and flung into spirals by the turning of wheels. Early to-morrow, there would be a busy sound of gardeners raking it smooth again. At present, there was the busy sound of rooks: it heightened Mrs. Montmorency’s and Laurence’s peaceful lassitude to reflect that rooks still had to talk, to flock and mix in intricate sociability. Men and women had, since seven o’clock, been released from this obligation.

There was nothing to say, they did not have to say anything: they exclaimed their thoughts casually, not answering one another’s, on the retreat towards silence. All the afternoon they had been asking questions, and ignoring the answers as far as possible. Laurence knew he could not be asked by his aunt to bring the chairs in or see whether Lois had locked up the garden while he sat here, so apparently entertaining Mrs. Montmorency.

Francie had not wanted to know how anyone was; health played too large a part in her life already. She had not wanted to know if they thought the garden lovely—the supremacy of Danielstown garden made opinion irrelevant—whether they preferred winter to summer because of the hunting, or summer to winter because of the tennis. Neither had it seemed to Laurence important whether anyone wanted more tea or had had really enough, whether they feared to be driven into the ditch by Black and Tans on the way home, or whether they knew Oxford. They both felt themselves coming to life again slowly, now that the party was over, and putting off a sort of antagonism. At an upstairs window they could hear Lady Naylor and Lois discussing the guests, agreeing that it had been a successful day.

Francie said: “I do wonder now whether this weather will last.” This gold weather had all the delights of a new perception, it made Danielstown real as a memory.

“I suppose they don’t really feel like that inside,” said Laurence.

“I wonder at them bringing a child like Hercules. I found him walking about the house when I went up for my air-cushion. The poor little fellow ... I let him blow up my air-cushion and then I took him and showed him photographs of the Carnival that I brought back from Nice. We talked quite a time; he tells me he is afraid of bats. I wonder now why they called him Hercules.”

“Wouldn’t it be terrible to be in the Army ...”

“Isn’t that young Mr. Lesworth devoted to Lois? I wonder does she feel it at all?”

“I always wonder what one does in the Army when one’s not doing something particular, very particularly.”

“I wonder if they would marry?”

“Marry?” said Laurence, surprised into attention. “I don’t see why. Though I don’t see why not. As Lois never does anything or seems to want to, I suppose she must be expecting to marry some one. And Lesworth is pleasant, I think, and rather pretty. He is like a photograph of a man in an advertisement putting on the right kind of collar. Doesn’t advertising develop—I sometimes wonder if one might not think of taking it up.”

“But doesn’t she draw very nicely?”

“Well, she could draw people in the Army doing things, like Lady Butler.”

“She is so sweet, I think; I love to watch her.”

“Her consumption of tennis is something enormous. There’s tennis to-morrow at Castle Trent and I’ve got to drive her over. I often wonder whether she really would get assaulted by Black and Tans if she went alone, or by sinister patriots, or whether she might not be old enough now to look after herself.”

“I’m afraid at her age,” said Francie, blushing; “her age isn’t any protection.”

“I cannot imagine wanting to assault anybody. But then I never can conceive of anybody else’s mentality—or isn’t that mentality? Why is it so much worse for a young girl to miss tennis than for a young man to miss Spain? I suppose it is something to do with the life force and that one must not trace the connection.”

“I wonder why she’s so fond of that Livvy Thompson—she seems to me managing.”

“She’s not fond—it’s contiguity. Why should they chop up the rather beautiful name of Olivia into something that sounds like cat’s meat?”

This Francie well understood, she herself did not care to be called Frances, it sounded formal. She sighed, and gathered together the folds of her grey-and-blue “mottledy” foulard. She had been wondering—watching Hugo so happy with Mrs. Trent, and now the speculation recurred to her—whether the woman Hugo had really needed would not have worn coats and skirts, snapped her fingers at dogs and recrossed her legs with decision. Mrs. Trent was an amusing good sort; she so radiated the quality that Francie, after a minute or two’s conversation, had felt quite a good sort also. Was she, though, perfectly understanding? But then did not Hugo perhaps feel a little smothered in one’s own understanding, a little reduced by it? For instance: Francie thought, honestly, Hugo had played magnificently this afternoon; several people had said to her: “It’s a delight to see your husband play on these courts again”; they would not have said that, surely, if he had not been playing magnificently! But even so armed, she would not be able to combat Hugo’s conviction that his tennis was going off, because it was something he never mentioned and he would be furious at hearing it put into words. So still she would have to feel his pride suffer—as though he were growing old, when there wasn’t a shadow of age on him. She remembered how he had shown up to-day, playing, sitting or walking, among the young men. She liked the young men, but they seemed all limbs and faces, not yet related. She wondered what Hugo had thought of the young men.

She thought of their room upstairs with quiet light in the ceiling; of ghostly roses that still showed faintly when one drew the curtains over the daylight. She supposed she ought to be lying down; she got up, murmuring something, and went indoors. Laurence stood up, vacillating. He wondered if they would meet him and make him do things if he were to venture up for his book.

Francie, crossing the ante-room, was waylaid by Lady Naylor coming out of Lois’s room. “Ah, there you are, Francie, good! Now I’m longing to know what you thought of them all. To tell you the truth, I am thankful it’s safely over. I hope they enjoyed themselves really: they looked all right.”

“Indeed they must have! It was a great success.” They sat down on two of the crimson chairs, stepping-stones over a lake of floor, to discuss the party.

Francie declared how pleasant she had found Mrs. Archie Trent, and how nice it had been to see Mrs. Carey again, and how handsome Nona was growing up. And what a pity it was, she said, about the Hartigans; they had been grown-up girls when she had seen them last, and it did seem hard! “And oh,” she cried, in a glow of pleasure and sympathy, “isn’t that young Mr. Lesworth very devoted?”

“Yes, he has charming manners; he comes over here a good deal. He’s so helpful with chairs and rugs: I do wish he were Laurence!”

“But so devoted to Lois—and really one can’t be surprised. The way he follows her round with his eyes—and his feet too⁠—”

“Sssh!” exclaimed Lady Naylor. “She’s in her room! I wouldn’t like her to pick up ideas like Livvy’s. Are you sure, by the way, you’re not thinking of Mr. Armstrong? There’s a very great case of devotion there. He follows Lois and Livvy follows him. I expect in the general confusion, with so many people, you mixed up the young men. They are all alike—it’s a pity, I always think. It’s a pity, too, about Lois and Livvy; it isn’t a friendship I like. But poor Livvy’s motherless and she’s always riding over to meals, and of course Lois needs girls of her own age. She made very nice friends at her school in England, but it’s so unlucky, they’re never allowed to come over. Something said in the English press has apparently given rise to an idea that this country’s unsafe. It’s unlucky for Lois. I should never go by the papers about England.... No, Francie, if you didn’t mix up the young men, I really don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, it’s been very stupid of me,” cried Francie, flushing with agitation. “Of course I should never have said if I hadn’t thought—if I hadn’t been led to think ... No, I see now that I oughtn’t to have. But I thought from what every one said ...”

“But I am still quite in the dark, dear,” said Lady Naylor, flushed also and smiling with irritation. “I suppose, however, you must have gathered that as I don’t understand what you do mean, what you mean cannot really be so.”

“Oh, of course,” agreed Francie, ruffling the silk on her lap with light, feathery touches. “All the same, I do think you ought to know, Myra, that every one said ...”

“One cannot help what people say, though it is always annoying. Not that I ever do know what they say: I make a point of not knowing. You know how I’ve always turned my face against gossip, especially these days: it’s annoying to hear of it everywhere, even at one’s own parties. It’s a very great danger, I think, to the life of this country.”

“Well, but really, you couldn’t say this was political. It seems to me natural that people should take an interest—they’re all so fond of her. If young Mr. Lesworth and Lois are really⁠—”

Lady Naylor was forced into open country. “Oh, is that it?” she exclaimed in enlightenment. “But really, my dear Francie, what a fuss about nothing! No, not you, dear; I never meant you made the fuss, but really with all these hints: ‘People are saying,’ you might have meant almost anything. One’s friends do excel themselves, really! Just because they’ve played tennis together and danced once or twice! Really, you would think they wanted one to divide one’s tennis parties up like a Quaker meeting, and turn ballrooms into that horrible kind of country dancing they have in England—Anna Partridge’s people do it—women hopping one way, waving things, men all hopping the other way, stamping. ‘Really,’ as I said to Anna Partridge, ‘if this is what you call getting in touch with the people, give me what you call feudalism!’”

“Yes. But really, Myra, is it so very improbable? They’re both so young, and so⁠—”

“Why yes, of course; exactly!” Lady Naylor sat up in her chair with a heightening of colour, an incisive gesture; her eyes threatened a falcon-swoop on her friend’s rash flank. “Ex-actly! Which is one of the many things that do make it so impossible.”

“I said ‘Improbable!’” Francie spoke with a funny zest. She hated arguments as she hated rain; once caught in the rain she could hear it crashing on her umbrella, feel it spill on her shoulders with exhilaration. She knew so little excitement. She now felt for the first time Myra’s equal in vigour and personality; she felt this opposition to Myra must at last increase their confidence in each other.

“In the first place,” said Lady Naylor, “he’s a subaltern. Subalterns can’t marry—not of course that they’re like priests, but they might just as well be until they are captains and thirty. Colonel Boatley feels very strongly ... Of course, he’s a thoroughly nice boy, so much liked in the Regiment. But then, what are the Rutlands nowadays? Of course they did magnificently in the War. But now they seem to be full of people like that extraordinary little Mrs. Vermont, who turned up perfectly pleased with herself this afternoon, in spite of Lois’s having quite forgotten that she’d asked her. No, he of course is charming, but he seems to have no relations. One cannot trace him. His mother, he says, lives in Surrey, and of course you do know, don’t you, what Surrey is. It says nothing, absolutely; part of it is opposite the Thames Embankment. Practically nobody who lives in Surrey ever seems to have been heard of, and if one does hear of them they have never heard of anybody else who lives in Surrey. Really altogether, I think all English people very difficult to trace. They are so pleasant and civil, but I do often wonder if they are not a little shallow: for no reason at all they will pack up everything and move across six counties.... Of course, I don’t say Gerald Lesworth’s people are in trade—I should never say a thing like that without foundation. Besides, if they were in trade there would be money, money on English people shows so much and he quite evidently hasn’t any. No, I should say they were just villa-ry.”

“But there are so many villas in England,” said Francie, “that some of the people who live in them are bound to be nice. I often think so, looking out of the train.”

“Very nice in their way, I am sure—but that’s not the immediate point, dear. There is no question at all—you understand?—of anything between Mr. Lesworth and Lois. And of course naturally they haven’t thought of it—if they had, don’t you see, they’d be much more careful to make it appear there wasn’t. Of course I agree that Lois ought to be more careful. I was careful at her age; I was careful by instinct, which is a thing that girls nowadays seem to lack. There seems nothing to do between putting ideas in a girl’s head and letting her behave like an absolute donkey. It is all very difficult, really. If she were my own niece I should speak to her—I should certainly speak to Laurence if he were going on like that—but as she’s Richard’s niece I don’t very well see that I can. There’s so little to go on. And I really cannot have Richard bothered, it makes him so difficult. When he feels he ought to do something and isn’t sure what, there’s no saying at all what he may do. One does dislike awkwardness. And it doesn’t seem kind to ask the young man his intentions when if he should have any they would have to be quashed immediately.... No, one must leave it at this. I rely on you, Francie, to contradict any more of this gossip that comes your way, and you might ask Hugo to also—if he has heard any⁠— Perhaps on the whole better not put the idea into his head; he might forget and discuss it with Richard.... Meanwhile, I shall talk to Lois seriously about her future. She draws very nicely; I often think that she might take that up. I must tell her to show you and Hugo some of her drawings.”

“But I don’t know anything about drawing.”

“Oh, all she needs is a little encouragement.”

“Just one thing, Myra—I think you’re so wise, you’re so perfectly right, as you know. I do always in general believe in letting things like this take their course. But ... as this thing can’t have a course, really mustn’t: is it quite fair to the young man? Because Lois is so very⁠—”

Here she broke off, scared by a terrible clatter in Lois’s room. A pail had been kicked and some furniture violently shifted.

“Oh, Francie!” exclaimed Lady Naylor reproachfully. “You ought to remember she’s there! One can’t be too careful! In fact, if you don’t mind, I expect we had better not talk any more. You must go and lie down—you’re looking as fresh as a rose, but I know how Hugo insists upon it.”

They got up, she took Francie’s arm and led her as far as her door. Francie felt like something being put back in its box. Lady Naylor went down, calling, to look for Laurence and ask him to bring the chairs in and lock up the garden.

For Lois, this had all been exceedingly difficult. There she was, caught in her bedroom, she had not the face to come out. The door went paper-thin as they raised their voices. At first it had seemed all right: Aunt Myra knew she was in here, having just left her. But soon their tones changed, a keen hunting note came into them; they were on a topic. Carried away, Aunt Myra had forgotten. She heard “Lois ... Lois ... Lois ...” She hummed and sang: they were too intent. To one’s sense of honour such things were agonizing. She leaned right out of a window into the cooling air, into the hush of limes on the avenue; she watched Uncle Richard and Mr. Montmorency walk to the white gate. Their heads nodded down from their shoulders like old men’s, happily; they spoke of Archie and Mrs. Archie and poor John. But from the room behind the other voices, flooding in through the door, came after her. She flung herself on her bed with a squawk from the springs and pressed her ear shut till the lobes and her finger-tips ached: also she pulled the pillows over her head. It was hot thus and still the voices penetrated. They came on steadily, like the Hound of Heaven. It was hard, really, the way they both kept at it.

The voices spoke of love: they were full of protest. Love, she had learnt to assume, was the mainspring of woman’s grievances. Illnesses all arose from it, the having of children, the illnesses children had; servants also, since the regular practice of love involved a home; by money it was confined, propped and moulded. Lois flung off the pillows and walked round the room quickly. She was angry; she strained to hear now, she quite frankly listened. But when Mrs. Montmorency came to: “Lois is very⁠—” she was afraid suddenly. She had a panic. She didn’t want to know what she was, she couldn’t bear to: knowledge of this would stop, seal, finish one. Was she now to be clapped down under an adjective, to crawl round lifelong inside some quality like a fly in a tumbler? Mrs. Montmorency should not!

She lifted her water jug and banged it down in the basin: she kicked the slop-pail and pushed the washstand about.... It was victory. Later on, she noticed a crack in the basin, running between a sheaf and a cornucopia: a harvest richness to which she each day bent down her face. Every time, before the water clouded, she would see the crack: every time she would wonder: what Lois was⁠— She would never know.

VIII

SIR RICHARD, to whom the idea about Lois and Gerald percolated in time through the family conversation, declared the idea was preposterous. What chiefly worried him was, might she not have mentioned to Gerald those guns in the lower plantations? He had charged her not to, but she was just like Laura, poor Laura’s own child in fact; she would talk and talk and you never knew where you had her. He announced, he had been thinking for some time subalterns should be fewer and more infrequent. He was delighted when he heard from the postman, and was able to pass on, how three young women in the Clonmore direction had had their hair cut off by masked men for walking out with the soldiers. And indeed they had got no sympathy from the priest either, the postman said, for the priest knew that English soldiers were most immoral.

“And how would you like it,” Sir Richard said to his niece indignantly, “if a thing like that were to happen to you?”

“I should be bobbed,” said Lois. “I should take it as a sign. But I have never walked an inch with anyone, not what you would call out, Uncle Richard.”

“But masked men,” said Lady Naylor, “would be a very nasty experience for a girl of your age.” Lois said she would prefer the men to be masked; she would be less embarrassed in the event of meeting them afterwards.

“I wonder what they do with the hair,” she added. She thought inwardly: “If they’re going to take this attitude, I could not be blamed for falling in love with a married man.” She searched her heart anxiously. She wrote to Viola that she feared she might be falling in love with a married man. But when she looked at Mr. Montmorency next morning at breakfast, and still more when she had to drive him back from Mount Isabel, the idea seemed shocking. She regretted having sent her letter to post in such a hurry.

Scandalized by the memory, she drove home briskly. On the bright sky, opposite, Mr. Montmorency’s pale face hung like an apparition’s. She took the curves of Mount Isabel drive with a rattle: the trap swung on its axle, the traces creaked. Beyond the gates, light lay flat and yellow along the hedges where brambles showered; hard red blackberries knocked on the spokes and swung back, shining. She took the short way, over a shoulder of mountain; the light-pink road crunched under the wheels like sugar. Coming up out from the lanes they bathed an hour or so in the glare of space. Height had the quality of depth: as they mounted they seemed to be striking deeper into the large mild crystal of an inverted sea. Out of the distance everywhere, pointless and unrelated, space came like water between them, slipping and widening. They receded from one another into the vacancy. On yellow furze-dust, light was hard and physical; over parching heather shadow faded and folded tone on tone, and was drawn to the sky on delicate brittle peaks.

The road bent over a ridge, the trap ran down on the pony’s rump; he and she shifted back on their seats. They stared with unfocussed intensity over each other’s shoulders. Gorse, they said, was never out of bloom (he commented). Nor kissing, they said (she supplied), out of season—yet she supposed this untrue; she supposed that they both sometimes must be. “And so much bitterness,” he exclaimed, “over this empty country!”

“What is it exactly,” she asked, “that they mean by freedom? What does it affect? What is it besides an excuse for war?”

“I suppose,” he said in his faint voice, as at the pit of a yawn, “some kind of a final peace—stability.”

“Then to fight’s absurd; the more one keeps on, the further from it one is. It’s a hopeless kind of beginning.” She looked at him earnestly, lucidly, like a puppy.

“You are very reasonable.... Do you read the papers?”

“Well ... I do hate things that have just happened.”

“—I don’t follow?”

“They’re so raw.”

The road was steep and the pony determined to trot; it stumbled; she pulled it up sharply. She was inclined to forget she was driving at all. He started and put out a hand, to steady himself, along the back of the seat. He hated things to be done badly; he was old-maidish. They were silent in a mutual criticism. As they came down and the mountains, drawn behind, were once more scenic, as hedges ran up at the sides of the road, the illusion of distance between them faded; they obtruded upon each other; a time when they could have talked was gone. They might have said, she felt now, anything; but what had remained unsaid, never conceived in thought, would exercise now a stronger compulsion upon their attitude. She was to believe they had approached each other in the unintimacy of silence. Shy with retrospective emotion she fidgeted in the trap, irked by his look, his manner, all his presence physically. Whenever she stretched a foot it touched his, always she seemed to be retreating, apologizing, having to shift her position. When she sat well forward to give her attention to driving, their knees touched.

“This trap’s too small,” she said finally. Mr. Montmorency—face dull on the bright sky—replied: “Oh, I don’t know—it depends on how one arranges oneself.” If he only would not smile—but he smiled constrainedly. Next to Laura, she was the most fidgety person from whom he had suffered. But Laura’s unrepose had been an irradiation, a quiver of personality. She was indefinite definitely, like a tree shining, shaking away outlines; a bay, a poplar in wind and sunshine. Her impulses—those incalculable springings-out of mind through the body—had had, like movements of branches, a wild kind of certainty. He had been half aware of some kind of design in her being of which she was unaware wholly.

Whereas, here still was Lois (now Laura’s tree had fallen), twisted away from him on the opposite seat of the trap, outraging tone in her pink jersey—a shade or two nearer than Laura, perhaps, to the accuracy passing for beauty. She looked gênée, dispirited; some failure, no doubt, in his company: he must be an old man to her. She glanced back once or twice at the mountains, from which a light peaty breath still came after them down the descending road.

She laughed suddenly, parted the reins, and jerking a rein in each hand, with wide elbows, chirruped and clucked to the pony. “This,” she said, “is how my governess used to drive. She used to say it came natural because all her people were horsey. She said her father had been a colonel and she used to plait hats out of crinkled paper and wear them. She loved my mother embarrassingly, and she was always embroidering things. My mother hated it—do you remember?”

“I don’t remember your governess. Hated what?”

“Being loved like that, and given embroidery. Miss Part used to laugh and say, ‘I’m afraid I’m terribly whimsical, Mrs. Farquar,’ and Mother used to say, ‘Oh no, I don’t expect you are really’—was it unkind?”

“Well, it sounds unkind.”

“I wonder if she would have liked being loved at my age—do you remember?”

“I don’t suppose she had made up her mind.”

Lois turned and looked at him so intently that he was uneasy suddenly: the bottom dropped out of the past, spilling all its security. He would never know how much Laura had said to her daughter those last ten years—years locked away from him: Lois had got the key. He said with acidity: “If she and I had married⁠—”

“Oh, yes....”

“My dear child, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Oh, but half of me would be. And I dare say,” she said charmingly, “the other half of me would have been much nicer.” The turning away of her look was more confidential than any directness.

“Thank you—don’t run over the little pigs!”

Michael Connor’s farm first announced itself by some pink little silky pigs running along the roadside. A sow got up, like a very maternal battleship. Connor children looked, shrieked, fell from a gate and fled to the farmhouse, skirting a pool of liquid manure in the front yard. It was a nice farm, Lois pointed out, it had the door and window-frames painted blue, the colour of all the cart-wheels. The Connors were darling people; she drove past slowly, leaning over the side of the trap to see if the family were about. The house was one story high, with a slate roof. Mr. Montmorency sat frowning; he could not remember if this were a Michael Connor he ought to remember.

Michael Connor came out from a furze-thatched shed at the side. He took off his wide straw hat and shook hands with them both. His hand was bony, nervous and dry as earth. “It’s a grand evening,” said he with a melancholy smile.

“It is indeed. And how,” she asked, apprehensive, “is Mrs. Connor?”

“Ah, the poor woman ... the poor woman!” Michael looked away from them, nobody spoke. Lois at last said: “Give her my love.”

“I will,” said Michael, “and proud she will be. And yourself’s looking lovely, Miss Lois; a fine strong lady, glory be to God.”

“You remember Mr. Montmorency?”

“Sure indeed I do!” exclaimed Michael, and shook hands with Mr. Montmorency again with greater particularity. “And very well I remember his poor father. You are looking grand, sir, fine and stout; I known you all these years and I declare I never seen you looking stouter. And welcome back to Danielstown, Mr. Montmorency, welcome back, sir!”

“Are your grandchildren well?”

“They are,” said Connor gloomily, “but they’re very bashful. And they do be stravaging about always and not contented at all. They are a great distress to herself, and she unable to come out after them.”

“But is Mrs. Peter Connor not with you?”

“She is, Miss Lois. But she is desthroyed with it all and disheartened. Indeed, miss, she is in great distress; and she always looking and starting and craning up the boreen. It is torn in herself she is; distracted for Peter and dhreading he’ll come. It would dishearten yous to be with her daily and nightly the way she is, the poor woman. And the military from Carveen have the hearts torn out of us nightly, and we stretched for sleep, chasing and charging about in the lorries they have. Sure you cannot go a step above in the mountains without them ones lepping out from your feet like rabbits. Isn’t it the great pity they didn’t finish their German war once they had it started?”

“And no news at all of Peter?” Lois asked, diffident.

“We have not,” said Michael, expressionless. His face resumed its repose. The sum of detachment and sadness was this special kind of nobility. “And I don’t know what is to be the end of it,” resumed Michael, with a return to his conversational manner. “I couldn’t tell you what will be the outcome at all. These surely are times that would take the heart from you. And thank you, Miss Lois, and you too yourself, your honour.”

They once more shook hands, complimented each other again on the beauty of the evening, and Lois drove on. Michael stood at the gate till they turned the corner. The mountain farm, its wind-bitten firs dragged east, its furze-thatched byres, sank slowly under the curve of a hill. Looking longest after them, like an eye, a window glittered. Some grey geese that had gaped and straggled behind the trap relinquished the chase abruptly, stumbled round in a flock and went straining off in the other direction. Their backs were more than oblivious; they made the trap, the couple in it, an illusion. And indeed Lois and Hugo both felt that their pause, their talk, their passing had been less than a shadow.

“That is not,” said Hugo, after reflection, “the Michael Connor that I remember. He was a foxy man with a chin. Has that one a son Peter?”

“He has. I expect you guessed—he is on the run—‘Proscribed’ don’t they call it? He could be shot at sight. He is wanted over an ambush in County Clare; they got him once, but he escaped again—I was so glad. I shouldn’t wonder if he was up the boreen at the moment. I know he is home, for Clancey saw him three days ago. But don’t speak of it—one cannot be too careful. Poor Mrs. Peter must be in a dreadful state, wherever he is. Mrs. Michael is dying, you know: she has been dying a long time. The last time I went up they wouldn’t let me see her, because of the pain.... There are young men gone from three of the farms up here—Captain Carmichael told me; he is Intelligence Officer. And I know it is true, because Clancey told me too—I say, supposing Gerald had happened to be with us and Peter Connor had come down the boreen, would Gerald have had to have shot him, or would he have been off duty?”

“Peter might have shot Gerald.”

“Oh no, not when he was with me. Besides,” she added, “Gerald is so matter of fact. Nothing could make him into a tragedy.”

Hugo debating if she were subtle or very stupid, Lois busy with melodrama, they drove home briskly. To the south, below them, the demesne trees of Danielstown made a dark formal square like a rug on the green country. In their heart, like a dropped pin, the grey glazed roof reflecting the sky lightly glinted. Looking down, it seemed to Lois they lived in a forest; space of lawns blotted out in the pressure and dusk of trees. She wondered they were not smothered; then wondered still more that they were not afraid. Far from here too, their isolation became apparent. The house seemed to be pressing down low in apprehension, hiding its face, as though it had her vision of where it was. It seemed to gather its trees close in fright and amazement at the wide, light, lovely unloving country, the unwilling bosom whereon it was set. From the slope’s foot, where Danielstown trees began, the land stretched out in a plain flat as water, basin of the Madder and Darra and their fine wandering tributaries, till the far hills, faint and brittle, straining against the inrush of vaster distance, cut the droop of the sky like a glass blade. Fields gave back light to the sky—the hedges netting them over thinly and penetrably—as though the sheen of grass were a shadow on water, a breath of colour clouding the face of light. Rivers, profound in brightness, flowed over beds of glass. The cabins lifting their pointed white ends, the pink and yellow farms were but half opaque; cast doubtfully on their fields the shadow of living. Square cattle moved in the fields like saints, with a mindless certainty. Single trees, on a rath, at the turn of a road, drew up light at their roots. Only the massed trees—spread like a rug to dull some keenness, break some contact between self and senses perilous to the routine of living—only the trees of the demesne were dark, exhaling darkness. Down among them, dusk would stream up the paths ahead, lie stagnant over the lawns, would mount in the tank of garden, heightening the walls, dulling the borders like a rain of ashes. Dusk would lie where one looked as though it were in one’s eyes, as though the fountain of darkness were in one’s own perception. Seen from above, the house in its pit of trees seemed a very reservoir of obscurity; from the doors one must come out stained with it. And the kitchen smoke, lying over the vague trees doubtfully, seemed the very fume of living.

But as they drove down the home-sense quickened; the pony, knowing these hedges, rocketed hopefully in the shafts. The house became a magnet to their dependence. And indeed it was nice, they felt in this evening air, to be driving home, with all they would have to tell of the Mount Isabel party, to all they would have to hear of Sir Richard’s day in Cork. Friendly women smiled at them over half-doors of cabins. And they both felt approached, friendlier, turning in up the avenue under the arch of the trees; he accepting her with philosophy as though she were his daughter, she comforted in her fancy, as though he had wept coming over the mountains and told her his life was empty because she could never be his wife.

She said: “I hope we shan’t have to wait for dinner; I couldn’t bear it.” He said: “Really?” shocked to discover that he also had been thinking of dinner.

Livvy Thompson had ridden over; she sat on the steps with her habit over her knee, waving as they approached. She had sent a message round to the yard when she heard the trap, so that a man immediately came to take the pony. “Listen now⁠—” she began. But Lois only gave her a brush of the hand; she couldn’t speak till she had rushed past her into the hall to look for the post, because of a tearing feeling of expectation. There was Viola’s square blue temperate envelope on the table. There was nothing more but some gloves Lady Naylor had worn in Cork, some English papers, a box of tennis balls. She had again that conclusive feeling of disappointment. “They’re back,” she said to Hugo.

“Listen now,” resumed Livvy, coming in after her. Lois slipped Viola’s letter into her pocket and buttoned the flap over it. For what Viola would think of Livvy she did not like to imagine.

Livvy was anxious to know if Lois had seen Mr. Lesworth lately, and, if so, whether he had happened to mention Mr. Armstrong. Because it did seem strange, she thought, about Mr. Armstrong; she almost feared that he must be ill. When she heard Mr. Lesworth had not appeared either, she was amazed, she said, that Lois was not more worried. It was now too evident something must be the matter. She pointed out it was her duty and Lois’s to find out if they were ill, or indeed if worse hadn’t happened, as worse might, to the two young Englishmen in a hostile country. Lois, thumbing Viola’s envelope, said she was quite certain they would have heard. Livvy suspected something was hushed up for fear of the English papers: nothing was ever allowed in the English papers that could be mortifying for the English people to read.

“If they should only be ill,” she said, “there would be so many little things we could do for them. It does seem in a kind of a way an opportunity. I often think it is only when a man is ill that he understands what a woman means in his life.”

Lois said that her own impression of a man ill was one of extreme crossness and of inability to find the nicest woman attractive at all. She pointed out that there was an excellent military hospital at Clonmore, so that they need not imagine David and Gerald tossing feverish and untended. She did not suppose they would be allowed a visit, and confessed that, for her part, she found people lying down while she stood up embarrassing; so curiously bumpy and extremely difficult to talk to.

“But if he seemed at all unlikely to recover,” said Livvy, “there would be several things I should like to say to Mr. Armstrong. If he should recover after all, he would be gentlemanly enough to forget them, though there would be no harm in their leaving a pleasant impression. To tell you the truth, Lois, I have often wondered if he does not think me a little reserved and cold. Does it ever seem to you that he looks discouraged? You see, he is accustomed to English girls who are very free; I believe there is almost nothing they will not let a man say and that they get kissed before they get engaged. Now I should not like him to think I had no heart at all. You know Irish girls in books are always made out so fascinating and heartless; I should not like him to think that of me. And if he does recover, he might go back to England and get engaged to a girl simply out of his lower nature. I should not like to feel I had spoilt a man’s life.”

“I expect,” said Lois, “it is their week for extra duty.” She thought: “If only I weren’t so certain there’d be a letter from Gerald to-morrow! If only he’d let me wonder! He is so terribly there....” If only his coming or writing could have some touch of the miracle, heal a doubt.

“Will you not stay to dinner?” she said to Livvy. “You could borrow one of my frocks.”

“I’d like that yellow taffeta, though I should have to reef it in. It’s a great inconvenience, Lois, being so slight as I am, though it does seem to be admired. Are you sure your aunt will not mind?... But no, thank you, I couldn’t; my father’d kill me for riding home after dark. In fact, I should go now,”—looking up at the sky—“one never knows, does one? Isn’t that too bad?”

“Too bad,” agreed Lois, touching her letter. She walked round to the yard with Livvy to get her horse. “But listen,” said Livvy, mounting, “there’s one thing that we had better do. We can drive in to Clonmore, Wednesday, to do some shopping: I really do need wool for a jumper. And if we should meet Mr. Smith or Captain Carmichael, I should just mention, laughingly, we hadn’t seen any of them for a long time. And then it might all come out. Or if the worst came to the worst, we could drop in to tea at the Fogartys’; if there was nobody else, there’d be bound to be Mrs. Vermont. I don’t think she’s trustworthy, but if there were anything definite she’d be bound to say—like illness, or an ambush they were not supposed to mention. Or it might all come right and the first we would meet might be Mr. Lesworth or Mr. Armstrong.... I certainly think, Lois, that is what we should do. If you can’t get your uncle’s trap, I will take my father’s.”

She rode away. Lois listened until the romantic horse-hoofs had died on the avenue, smothered in trees. This manner of Livvy’s of coming and going gave her a setting—picaresque, historical somehow. She would have been much worse if she had ridden away on a bicycle⁠— Then she took Viola’s letter out of her pocket and read it out there in the yard. Gnats danced in the underneath gloom of the chestnuts.

Viola did think Lois took feeling rather too earnestly. Lois must not grow less interesting. She admitted the little Gerald might be affecting; he was permitted to happen once. Gerald assimilated, she should be more of a woman. Only don’t lose detachment, darling; do not lose distance. Viola would be delighted if Lois would give her “Trivia.” She confessed it did startle her to be reminded that up to now she had been only eighteen by this talk of a nineteenth birthday. She felt, she said, older than the rocks among which she sat—she wrote from a rock-garden. Maurice Evans, a really ridiculous person, sat on a pink tuft of something valuable, apparently painting her. By the way, did Laurence read Pater? Maurice did not—did really anyone nowadays? Did Lois think that Viola might intrigue Laurence? Laurence continued a subject for speculation for three paragraphs. She only referred to Mr. Montmorency indirectly, and at the very end. She warned against introspection. “For introspection, darling, does make us the prey of the nice-middle-aged.” She complained there was too much introspection and tennis in Lois’s letters. “Don’t talk of yourself to that elderly man.”

Lois, relieved but chagrined by the omission, wondered if Viola really did read one’s letters at all thoroughly. She always noticed the split infinitives—one could not be sure. Lois turned in at the back door and pulled herself up to dress by the back-stairs banisters. She sniffed—duck for dinner again: it seemed the end of a cycle. This morning she had renewed the roses in Mrs. Montmorency’s room.

Crossing the ante-room, a spring in some board from her step made an unlatched door swing open. She saw Mr. Montmorency in shirt-sleeves brushing his wife’s hair. And Francie, facing the glass, saw Lois reflected, standing still in alarm on the shining floor. They smiled at each other. Mr. Montmorency, thoughtfully and heavily brushing, did not observe the interchange.