LOIS, dressed for dinner, was tidying her writing-table; two stamped
letters, her handiwork, leaned on the clock. She shook out her pink
suède blotter and started to sort its contents, but had to re-read
everything. Gerald, who had written about a tournament, concluded: “You
have the loveliest soft eyes.” She was perplexed, thought: “But what
can I do?” and snapped the letter, with others, under a rubber band.
Then she pulled out a drawer called “general” and swept the rest into
it. She had a waste-paper basket, but only for envelopes. Strokes of
the gong, brass bubbles, came bouncing up from the hall. She ran to the
glass, changed a necklace, had an apprehensive interchange with her own
reflection. What of the night?
Mrs. Montmorency and Laurence were in the drawing-room. They looked
anxious, nothing showed the trend of the conversation. The pale room
rose to a height only mirrors followed above the level of occupation;
this disproportionate zone of emptiness dwarfed at all times figures
and furniture. The distant ceiling imposed on consciousness its blank
white oblong, and a pellucid silence, distilled from a hundred and
fifty years of conversation, waited beneath the ceiling. Into this
silence, voices went up in stately attenuation. Now there were no
voices; Mrs. Montmorency and Laurence sat looking away from each other.
As Lois came in Laurence slapped his pockets over and saying something
about a pipe left the room quickly, leaving Lois in the grip of a
_tête-à-tête_. Mrs. Montmorency, seated in a window, held by a corner
a copy of the _Spectator_, that had slipped down against the silk of
her dress, as though she must be sure to retain this constant refuge
from conversation. Vague presence, barely a silhouette, the west light
sifting into her fluffy hair and lace wrappings so that she half
melted, she gave so little answer to one’s inquiry that one did not
know how to approach. So Lois stood staring, full in the light.
“Oh, you do look sweet!” exclaimed the visitor. “Black is so striking.
No, you are not like Laura--I don’t know who you’re like.”
“Aunt Myra isn’t sure about black for girls,” said Lois, sweeping
forward for admiration the folds of her dress. “But a white slip
lightens it.”
“And I expect you are having a wonderful time now you’re grown up?”
“Oh, well ...” said Lois. She went across to the fireplace and rose
on her tiptoes, leaning her shoulders against the marble. She tried
not to look conscious. She still felt a distinct pride at having grown
up at all; it seemed an achievement, like marriage or fame. Having a
wonderful time, she knew, meant being attractive to a number of young
men. If she said, “Yes, I do,” it implied “Yes, I am, very--” and she
was not certain. She was not certain, either, how much she enjoyed
herself. “Well, yes, I do,” she said finally.
“Tell me,” continued Mrs. Montmorency, “wasn’t that your cousin
Laurence?”
“As a matter of fact I am Uncle Richard’s niece and he Aunt Myra’s
nephew.”
“And isn’t he very intellectual?”
“I suppose he is, really.”
“I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Montmorency, “I had no idea how to talk to him.
I suppose _you_’d never find that difficult. I expect now, Lois, you’re
very modern.”
“Oh, well, not really,” said Lois, pleased. Mrs. Montmorency’s
expression, condensing now from her outline, was of such affection and
interest that Lois was moved to go on: “You could talk to him really
about almost anything except about politics. He isn’t allowed any here
because the ones he brings over from Oxford are all wrong.”
“_Wrong?_” cried the visitor with a startled flush, putting up a hand
to her face as though to press back the mounting colour. “Wrong--which
way? How do you mean, ‘wrong’?”
“Inconvenient.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Montmorency. And upon a recurrence of the puzzled
silence that had been the note of Lois’ entrance, Sir Richard came
in. Sir Richard was very much worried by visitors who came down early
for dinner: evidently he had not expected this of Francie. “Oh!” he
exclaimed reproachfully, “this is too bad; I had no idea you were down.
Myra’s been delayed--you know yourself how it happens.”
“Indeed, yes,” said Francie warmly. She would never have been in time
herself if she had had a home of her own. Only the little blanks and
rifts in her life accounted for her punctuality.
Sir Richard, touching his tie vaguely, wandered about the room,
displacing with some irritation the little tables that seemed to spring
up in his path, in the pent-up silence of a powerful talker not yet in
gear.
“Very fine weather,” he said at last, “warm at nights--or would you
like me to shut that window?” He was bothered; he could not remember
how well he had once known Francie, or decide at just what degree
of intimacy he was expected to pick her up again. “Lois has grown
up, hasn’t she?” he continued, pointing out his niece with an air of
inspiration. “She seems to me to have grown up very fast. Now how long
is it since you saw her over in England?”
“But I never did see her.”
“That was extraordinary,” said Sir Richard, looking from one to the
other. “Didn’t you meet poor Laura?”
“I did, but Lois was out.”
“That was too bad.” Sir Richard’s bother increased, with a suspicion of
something somewhere. He observed rather flatly: “Then it can hardly be
such a surprise to you that she’s grown up.”
“Not in the same way.”
“We can all sit out on the steps to-night,” said Lois, determined to
check the couple in their career of inanity. She went across to a
window and folded her arms on the sill.
The screen of trees that reached like an arm from behind the
house--embracing the lawns, banks and terraces in mild ascent--had
darkened, deepening into a forest. Like splintered darkness, branches
pierced the faltering dusk of leaves. Evening drenched the trees; the
beeches were soundless cataracts. Behind the trees, pressing in from
the open and empty country like an invasion, the orange bright sky
crept and smouldered. Firs, bearing up to pierce, melted against the
brightness. Somewhere, there was a sunset in which the mountains lay
like glass.
Dark had so gained the trees that Lois, turning back from the window,
was surprised at how light the room was. Day, still coming in from the
fields by the south windows, was stored in the mirrors, in the sheen
of the wall-paper, so that the room still shone. Mr. Montmorency had
come in and was standing where she had stood, his shoulders against the
mantelpiece.
“We can sit out on the steps to-night, can’t we?” persisted Lois. And
because no one answered or cared and a conversation went on without
her, she felt profoundly lonely, suspecting once more for herself a
particular doom of exclusion. Something of the trees in their intimacy
of shadow was shared by the husband and wife and their host in the
tree-shadowed room. She thought of love with its gift of importance. “I
must break in on all this,” she thought as she looked round the room.
“Do you still go to sleep after dinner?” she asked Mr. Montmorency.
“It’s a thing that I never have done,” he said, annoyed.
“But it’s what I chiefly remember about you.”
“I’m afraid,” he said, tolerant, “you are mixing me up with some one
else.”
“Listen, Richard,” said Francie; “are you sure we will not be shot at
if we sit out late on the steps?”
Sir Richard laughed and they all shared his amusement. “We never have
yet, not even with soldiers here and Lois dancing with officers up and
down the avenue. You’re getting very English, Francie! Isn’t Francie
getting very English? Do you think maybe we ought to put sandbags
behind the shutters when we shut up at nights?”
“No, but Richard, seriously--” began Francie then, as they all
stared, laughed and had to give up and go on laughing. Now in County
Carlow they had said things were bad round here, that she made a grave
mistake in coming at all. But then, as Richard would certainly say,
that was County Carlow all over.
Lady Naylor came in arm-in-arm with Laurence and said they were all
very punctual. “The gong’s only gone three minutes, also I could be
certain I never heard any of you go down. But I was delayed, as I told
Richard to tell you. Shall we go in?”
“Francie wants to know,” said Sir Richard, offering Francie his arm,
“if we haven’t got a machine-gun?”
“Ah, you’re too bad!”
“_Do_ you dance on the avenue?” said Mr. Montmorency to Lois.
“Only once, for a bet. I and a man called Mr. Lesworth danced to the
white gate, and the man that we had the bet with walked after us
carrying the gramophone. But naturally, I don’t as a rule.”
“It would come hard on your shoes, I expect,” said Mr. Montmorency
distantly.
“And the men we know can’t get over here in the evening, now.”
“Still, I expect you have a very gay time,” said Mr. Montmorency, and
turned away.
In the dining-room, the little party sat down under the crowd of
portraits. Under that constant interchange from the high-up faces
staring across--now fading each to a wedge of fawn-colour, and each
looking out from a square of darkness tunnelled into the wall--Sir
Richard and Lady Naylor, their nephew, niece and old friends had a
thin, over-bright look, seemed on the air of the room unconvincingly
painted, startled, transitory. Spaced out accurately round the enormous
table--whereon, in what was left of the light, damask birds and roses
had an unearthly shimmer--each so enisled and distant that a remark
at random, falling short of a neighbour, seemed a cry of appeal, the
six, in spite of an emphasis of speech and gesture they unconsciously
heightened, dwindled personally. While above, the immutable figures,
shedding on to the wash of dusk smiles, frowns, every vestige of
personality, kept only attitude--an outmoded modestness, a quirk or a
flare, hand slipped under a ruffle or spread airily over the cleft of
a bosom--cancelled time, negatived personality and made of the lower
cheerfulness, dining and talking, the faintest exterior friction.
In Laurence’s plate of clear soup six peas floated. Six accurate
spoonfuls, each with a pea in it, finished the soup. He glanced right
in his aunt’s direction, left in Mrs. Montmorency’s: both were talking.
Mr. Montmorency, listening to Lady Naylor, seemed to be looking across
at Laurence, but he sat with his back to the light so that Laurence,
short-sighted, could not be sure--he preferred uncertainty.
Lady Naylor spoke of the way things were, with her pointed spoon poised
over her plate. She noticed the others were waiting, and with a last
bright emphatic look in Hugo’s direction bent to finish her soup. He
said at once to Laurence: “And what do _you_ think of things?”
“Things? Over here?”
“Yes--yes.”
“Seem to be closing in,” said Laurence, crumbling his bread detachedly;
“rolling up rather.”
“Ah!” nodded Mr. Montmorency, in significant comprehension.
“Ssh!” exclaimed Lady Naylor, running out a hand at both of them over
the cloth. She frowned, with a glance at the parlourmaid. “Now you
mustn’t make Laurence exaggerate. All young men from Oxford exaggerate.
All Laurence’s friends exaggerate: I have met them.”
“If you have noticed it,” said her nephew, “it is probably so.”
Lois, on his other side, leant eagerly to Mr. Montmorency. “If you are
interested, would you care to come and dig for guns in the plantation?
Or if I dig, will you come as a witness? Three of the men on the place
here swear there are guns buried in the lower plantation. Michael
Keelan swears he was going through there, late, and saw men digging. I
asked him, ‘What were they like?’ and he said, ‘The way they would be,’
and I said, why didn’t he ask them what they were doing, and he said,
‘Sure, why would I; didn’t I see them digging, and they with spades?’
So it appears he fled back the way he had come.”
“--Ah, that’s nonsense now!” Sir Richard exploded. “Michael would see
anything: he is known to have seen a ghost. I will not have the men
talking, and at all accounts I won’t have them listened to.”
“All the same,” pursued Lois, “I feel that one ought to dig. If there
is nothing there I can confound Michael for the good of his soul, and
if there should be guns, Uncle Richard, just think of finding them! And
surely we ought to know.”
“And why would we want to know? You’ll have the place full of soldiers,
trampling the young trees. There’s been enough damage in that
plantation with the people coming to sight-see: all Michael’s friends.
Now I won’t have digging at all: do you understand?” said Sir Richard,
flushed.
Francie felt torn in herself, dividedly sympathetic. “I expect one
can’t be too careful.... The poor young little trees ... and besides,”
she added to Lois, “one might blow oneself up.”
“This country,” continued Sir Richard, “is altogether too full of
soldiers, with nothing to do but dance and poke old women out of their
beds to look for guns. It’s unsettling the people, naturally. The fact
is, the Army’s got into the habit of fighting and doesn’t know what
else to do with itself, and also the Army isn’t at all what it used
to be. I was held up yesterday for I wouldn’t like to say how long,
driving over to Ballyhinch, by a thing like a coffee-pot backing in and
out of a gate, with a little brute of a fellow bobbing in and out at
me from under a lid at the top. I kept my temper, but I couldn’t help
telling him _I_ didn’t know what the country was coming to--and just
when we’d got the horses accustomed to motors. ‘You’ll do no good,’ I
told him, ‘in this unfortunate country by running about in a thing like
a coffee-pot.’ And those patrols in lorries run you into a ditch as
soon as look at you. They tell me there’s a great deal of socialism now
in the British Army.”
“Well, it’s difficult for them all,” said his wife, pacific, “and
they’re doing their best, I think. The ones who come over here seem
quite pleasant.”
“What regiment have you now at Clonmore?”
“The 1st Rutlands.”
“And there are some Field Gunners and Garrison Gunners too,” added
Lois. “Most people seem to prefer the Garrison Gunners.”
“The Garrison Gunners dance better,” said Laurence to Mrs. Montmorency.
“It would be the greatest pity if we were to become a republic and all
these lovely troops were taken away.”
“Fool,” said Lois across the flowers. Mr. Montmorency looked at her in
surprise.
Lady Naylor continued: “From all the talk, you might think almost
anything was going to happen, but we never listen. I have made
it a rule not to talk, either. In fact, if you want rumours, we
must send you over to Castle Trent. And I’m afraid also the Careys
are incorrigible.... Oh yes, Hugo, it’s all very well to talk of
disintegration; of course there is a great deal of disintegration in
England and on the Continent. But one does wonder sometimes whether
there’s really much there to disintegrate.... I dare say there may
have been.... And if you talk to the people they’ll tell you the
whole thing’s nonsense: and after all what is a country if it isn’t
the people? For instance, I had a long conversation this morning with
Mrs. Pat Gegan, who came down about the apples--you remember her,
Hugo, don’t you, she always asks after you: she was really delighted
to hear you were coming back--‘It is the way the young ones do be a
bit wild,’ she said, and I really agreed with her. She said young
people were always the same, and wasn’t it the great pity. She is a
most interesting woman: she thinks a great deal. But then our people
do think. Now have you ever noticed the English? I remember a year ago
when I was staying with Anna Partridge in Bedfordshire--she is always
so full of doing things in the village, little meetings and so on.
Well, I went to one of her meetings, and really--those village women
sitting round in hats and so obviously despising her! And not a move
on their faces. I said to her afterwards: ‘I do think you’re splendid,
Anna, the way you throw yourself into things--but really what you can
do with people with so little brain--’ She seemed quite annoyed
and said that at least they were loyal. I said they hadn’t got any
alternative, and if they had an alternative I didn’t suppose they’d
see it. She said they had hearts of gold if they didn’t wear them on
their sleeves, and I said I thought it was a pity they didn’t--it would
have brightened them up a bit. She said that at least one knew where
one was with them, and I said I wouldn’t live among people who weren’t
human. Then I thought it seemed a shame to unsettle her, if she really
likes living in England.... Oh, and I said to Mrs. Gegan this morning:
‘Some of your friends would like us to go, you know,’ and she got so
indignant she nearly wept. And the Trents were telling me-- Oh, Hugo,
the Trents are coming over to tennis to-morrow, specially for you and
Francie. And the Thompsons are coming, and I believe the Hartigans. The
Hartigan girls are still all there, you’ll be surprised to hear. Nobody
seems to marry them--and oh, a Colonel and Mrs. Boatley are coming, and
three or four of the Rutlands--”
“Five,” said Lois.
“--Anyhow, several Rutlands. Every one’s so delighted to hear that you
and Francie are back.”
“The Trents,” said Lois to Mr. Montmorency, with indignation, “swear
that you and they are related. But you are not, surely? It is a perfect
obsession of theirs.”
When he said he supposed that he was, through an aunt’s marriage,
she became pensive. It seemed odd that even the Trents should have a
closer claim than she had. Though it was she who had been humming with
agitation the whole morning. The sweet-peas in the urn before them bore
evidence to her agitation: they all slanted to the west like a falling
haystack. It was true she now hoped nothing more of him, but he still
was in shadow, faintly, from the kindly monolith of her childhood.
What he might have been, what he persisted in being, met in her mind
with a jar, with a grate of disparity. The face she had watched
sleeping--wiped clear of complexity, quiet but so communicative in
stillness that, watching, she seemed to have shared in some kind of
suspense, stayed--like the bright blur from looking too long at a
lamp--over the face now turned to her, intelligent, dulled, with its
sub-acid smile. She was likely to think of him now as a limitation,
Mrs. Montmorency’s limitation; something about Mrs. Montmorency that
was a pity. The Trents could have him.
“I expect,” she said slightingly, “you are related to every one.”
“The longer one lives in this country,” he all too agreeably said, “the
more likely that seems.”
Yet she had been certain she felt him looking at her while she argued
with Uncle Richard about the guns. Seeking a likeness, perhaps. It was
this consciousness that had lent her particular fervour--though she was
interested in the guns. Though when she turned round his profile was
turned away--in, it seemed, the most scornful repudiation.
He had, as a matter of fact, been looking at her, but without intention
and with a purely surface observation of detail. When she turned
away, light from behind her ran a finger round the curve of her jaw.
When she turned his way, light took the uncertain, dinted cheek-line
where, under the eyes, flesh was patted on delicately over the rise of
the bone. Her eyes, long and soft-coloured, had the intense brimming
wandering look of a puppy’s; in repose her lips met doubtfully, in
a never-determined line, so that she never seemed to have quite
finished speaking. Her face was long, her nose modelled down from the
bridge then finished off softly and bluntly as by an upward flick
of the sculptor’s thumb. Her chin had emphasis, seemed ready for
determination. He supposed that unformed, anxious to make an effect,
she would marry early.
“Danielstown can’t have been so exciting when you were here before,”
said Lois to Mrs. Montmorency.
But Mrs. Montmorency, in an absence of mind amounting to exaltation,
had soared over the company. She could perform at any moment,
discomfitingly, these acts of levitation. She was staring into one of
the portraits.