LOIS was sent upstairs for the shawls; it appeared that a touch of dew
on the bare skin might be fatal to Lady Naylor or Mrs. Montmorency.
On the stairs, her feet found their evening echoes; she dawdled,
listening. When she came down everybody was on the steps--at the top,
on the wide stone plateau--the parlourmaid looking for somewhere to put
the coffee tray. Mrs. Montmorency sat in the long chair; her husband
was tucking a carriage rug round her knees. “If you do that,” Lois
could not help saying, “she won’t be able to walk about, which is the
best part of sitting out.”
No one took any notice: Mr. Montmorency went on tucking.
“Haven’t you got a wrap for yourself?” said Lady Naylor. Lois took a
cushion and sat on the top step with her arms crossed, stroking her
elbows. “I shouldn’t sit there,” her aunt continued; “at this time of
night stone will strike up through anything.”
“If you don’t get rheumatism now,” added Francie, “you will be storing
up rheumatism.”
“It will be my rheumatism,” said Lois as gently as possible, but added
inwardly: “After you’re both dead.” A thought that fifty years hence
she might well, if she wished, be sitting here on the steps,--with
or without rheumatism--having penetrated thirty years deeper ahead
into Time than they could, gave her a feeling of mysteriousness and
destination. And she was fitted for this by being twice as complex as
their generation--for she must be: double as many people having gone to
the making of her.
Laurence, looking resentfully round for somewhere to sit--she had taken
the only cushion--said: “I suppose you think ants cannot run up your
legs if you cannot see them?”
Mr. Montmorency surprised her by offering a cigarette. He had a theory,
he said, that ants did not like cigarette smoke. The air was so quiet
now, the flame ran up his match without a tremble. “The ants are
asleep,” she said, “they disappear into the cracks of the steps. They
don’t bite, either; but the idea is horrid.”
“Don’t you want a chair?” When she said she didn’t, he settled back in
his own. Creaks ran through the wicker, discussing him, then all was
quiet. He was not due to leave the ship in which they were all rushing
out into Time till ten years after the others, though it was to the
others that he belonged. Turning half round, she watched light breathe
at the tips of the cigarettes; it seemed as though everybody were
waiting. Night now held the trees with a toneless finality. The sky
shone, whiter than glass, fainting down to the fretted leaf-line, but
was being steadily drained by the dark below, to which the grey of the
lawns, like smoke, as steadily mounted. The house was highest of all
with toppling immanence, like a cliff.
“I don’t think,” said Francie, “I remember anything so--so quiet as
evenings here.”
“Trees,” said Laurence, shifting his pipe. His shirt-front was high
above them, he stood by the door with his foot on the scraper.
“This time to-morrow,” said Lady Naylor, “we shall want to be
quiet--after the tennis party.” She let out a sigh that hung in the
silence, like breath in cold air.
“Oh yes, the party! The tennis party ...”
“Francie, did I tell you who were coming?”
“You told her,” said Laurence. “I heard you.”
“It is the people who don’t play tennis who make it so tiring.”
Something about the way, the resigned way, Francie’s hands lay out on
the rug gave her the look of an invalid. “It is a good thing,” said
Sir Richard, “you two never went out to Canada. I never liked the idea
myself; I was very much against it at the time, if you remember.”
“I was divided about it myself,” said Hugo. “It seemed worth trying,
and yet there was so much against it. I don’t know that I should have
done very much good--I wonder.”
They wondered with him, with degrees of indifference. Lois stroked her
dress--the feel of the stuff was like cobwebs, sticky and damp. There
must be dew falling.
“Oh!” cried Francie. “_Listen!_”
She had so given herself to the silence that the birth of sound, after
which the others were still straining, had shocked her nerves like a
blow. They looked, from the steps, over a bay of fields, between the
plantations, that gave on a sea of space. Far east, beyond the demesne:
a motor, straining cautiously out of the silence. A grind, an anguish
of sound as it took the hill.
“Patrols,” said Laurence.
Hugo reached out and pressed a hand on to Francie’s rug. “Patrols,” he
told her, translating the information.
Sir Richard explained severely: “Out every night--not always in this
direction.”
“They’re early; it’s half-past nine. Now I wonder ...”
The sound paused, for a moment a pale light showed up the sky in
darkness. Then behind the screen of trees at the skyline, demesne
boundary, the sound moved shakily, stoopingly, like some one running
and crouching behind a hedge. The jarring echoed down the spines of the
listeners. They heard with a sense of complicity.
“A furtive lorry is a sinister thing.”
“Laurence, it isn’t furtive!” said. Lady Naylor. “Can’t you be
ordinary? If it wouldn’t be taken in some absurd kind of way as a
demonstration, I should ask the poor fellows in to have coffee.”
“They’re careful enough,” said Hugo impatiently. It seemed that the
lorry took pleasure in crawling with such a menace along the boundary,
marking the scope of peace of this silly island, undermining solitude.
In the still night sound had a breathlessness, as of intention.
“The roads are so rough,” said Lois: she could see the wary load
lurching into the hedges. “I wonder now,” she added, “who is with the
patrol to-night?”
“Some one you know?” cried Francie. But Sir Richard, who did not like
his friends to be distracted from him by lorries any more than by
introspection or headaches or the observation of nature, bore this down
with one of his major chords:
“The lower tennis court, Hugo”--waving sideways into the darkness--“is
not what it used to be. Some cattle got on to it after the rain and
destroyed it. It’s had rolling enough to level a mountain, but it won’t
be the same for a long time. D’you remember the fours we had on that
court that summer--wasn’t it nineteen-six--you and I and O’Donnell and
poor John Trent?”
“I do. Now was it James O’Donnell or Peter that went to Ceylon?”
“That was a great summer; I never remember a summer like it. We had the
hay in by the end of June.”
The lorry ground off east towards Ballyhinch; silence sifting down
on its tracks like sand. Their world was clear of it and a pressure
lightened. Once more they could have heard a leaf turn in the trees
or a bird shifting along a branch. But they found it was now very
dark. Francie shivered, and Lady Naylor, rising formally, said she
thought they should go in. “Poor John Trent,” she added, gathering up
her cushions, “never got over that trouble he had with the Sheehans
over the Madder fishing. It went into court, you know, and of course
he lost. We always told him to keep it out of court. He was very
obstinate.”
“He was indeed,” said Sir Richard. “He made an enemy of Sheehan and
it’s not a good thing to have made an enemy. Though of course he’s
dead nowadays, so it may not matter.”
“It may to the Archie Trents.... Laurence, help Uncle Richard in with
the long chair, and remember to bring in your own chair afterwards.”
“I never had a chair.”
“Oh, they haven’t lighted the lamp in the hall. That is too bad! I am
lost without Sarah--do you remember Sarah, Francie? She died, you know.”
Lois, sitting still among rising, passing and vaguely searching
figures, cried: “But it’s only just beginning! You’re missing the whole
point. I shall walk up the avenue.”
Francie went in, groping; trailing her rug. The three men, carrying
wicker chairs, converged at the door: the chairs jostled. They all
put them down and apologized. Lois repeated: “_I_ shall walk up the
avenue.” But having arranged an order of procedure they all passed on
into the house, creaking and bumping. She walked down the steps alone:
she had wanted to be alone, but to be regretted.
“Mind you don’t get locked out!” her uncle shouted after her. The glass
doors shut with a rattle.
Lois walked alone up the avenue, where she had danced with Gerald.
She thought what a happy night that had been, and how foolish Mr.
Montmorency now thought them. He had seemed annoyed at her being young
when he wasn’t. She could not hope to explain that her youth seemed
to her also rather theatrical and that she was only young in that way
because people expected it. She had never refused a rôle. She could
not forgo that intensification, that kindling of her personality at
being considered very happy and reckless, even if she were not. She
could not hope to assure him she was not enjoying anything he had
missed, that she was now unconvinced and anxious but intended to be
quite certain, by the time she was his age, that she had once been
happy. For to explain this--were explanation possible to so courteous,
ironical and unfriendly a listener--would, she felt, be disloyal to
herself, to Gerald, to an illusion both were called upon to maintain.
Just by the lime, in that dancing night, she had missed a step and
sagged on his arm, which tightened. His hand slid up between her
shoulders; then, as she steadied back to the rhythm, down again. They
had set out laughing, noisy and conscious, but soon had to save their
breath. Gerald’s cheek, within an inch of her own, was too near to see.
All the way up, he had not missed a step; he was most dependable. And
remembering how the family had just now gone into the house--so flatly,
so unregrettingly, slamming the glass doors--she felt _that_ was what
she now wanted most--his eagerness and constancy. She felt, like a
steady look from him, the perfectness of their being together.
“Oh, I do want you!”
But he was very musical, he conducted a jazz band they had at the
barracks: while reaching out in her thoughts she remembered, the band
would be practising now. She was disappointed. To a line of tune the
thought flung her, she danced on the avenue.
A shrubbery path was solid with darkness, she pressed down it. Laurels
breathed coldly and close: on her bare arms the tips of leaves
were timid and dank, like tongues of dead animals. Her fear of the
shrubberies tugged at its chain, fear behind reason, fear before her
birth; fear like the earliest germ of her life that had stirred in
Laura. She went forward eagerly, daring a snap of the chain, singing;
a hand to the thump of her heart, dramatic with terror. She thought of
herself as forcing a pass. In her life--deprived as she saw it--there
was no occasion for courage, which like an unused muscle slackened and
slept.
High up a bird shrieked and stumbled down through dark, tearing the
leaves. Silence healed, but kept a scar of horror. The shuttered-in
drawing-room, the family sealed in lamplight, secure and bright like
flowers in a paper-weight--were desirable, worth much of this to
regain. Fear curled back from the carpet-border.... Now, on the path:
grey patches worse than the dark: they slipped up her dress knee-high.
The laurels deserted her groping arm. She had come to the holly, where
two paths crossed.
First, she did not hear footsteps coming, and as she began to notice
the displaced darkness thought what she dreaded was coming, was there
within her--she was indeed clairvoyant, exposed to horror and going to
see a ghost. Then steps, hard on the smooth earth; branches slipping
against a trench-coat. The trench-coat rustled across the path ahead,
to the swing of a steady walker. She stood by the holly immovable,
blotted out in her black, and there passed within reach of her hand,
with the rise and fall of a stride, a resolute profile, powerful as a
thought. In gratitude for its fleshliness, she felt prompted to make
some contact: not to be known seemed like a doom: extinction.
“It’s a fine night,” she would have liked to observe; or, to engage his
sympathies: “Up Dublin!” or even--since it was in her uncle’s demesne
she was straining under a holly--boldly--“What do you want?”
It must be because of Ireland he was in such a hurry; down from the
mountains, making a short cut through their demesne. Here was something
else that she could not share. She could not conceive of her country
emotionally: it was a way of living, an abstract of several landscapes,
or an oblique frayed island, moored at the north but with an air of
being detached and washed out west from the British coast.
Quite still, she let him go past in contemptuous unawareness. His
intentions burnt on the dark an almost visible trail; he might well
have been a murderer he seemed so inspired. The crowd of trees,
straining up from the passive disputed earth, each sucking up and
exhaling the country’s essence--swallowed him finally. She thought:
“Has he come for the guns?” A man in a trench-coat had passed without
seeing her: that was what it amounted to.
She ran back to tell, in excitement. Below, the house waited; vast on
its west side, with thin yellow lines round the downstairs shutters.
It had that excluded, sad, irrelevant look outsides of houses take in
the dark. Inside, they would all be drawing up closer to one another,
tricked by the half-revelation of lamplight. “Compassed about,”
thought Lois, “by so great a cloud of witnesses....” Chairs standing
round dejectedly; upstairs, the confidently waiting beds; mirrors
vacant and startling; books read and forgotten, contributing no more to
life; dinner-table certain of its regular compulsion; the procession of
elephants that throughout uncertain years had not broken file.
But as Lois went up the steps breathlessly, her adventure began to
diminish. It held ground for a moment as she saw the rug dropped in the
hall by Mrs. Montmorency sprawl like a body across the polish. Then
confidence disappeared, in a waver of shadow, among the furniture.
Conceivably, she had just surprised life at a significant angle in the
shrubbery. But it was impossible to speak of this. At a touch from
Aunt Myra adventure became literary, to Uncle Richard it suggested an
inconvenience; a glance from Mr. Montmorency or Laurence would make her
encounter sterile.
But what seemed most probable was that they would not listen.... She
lighted her candle and went up to bed--uncivilly, without saying good
night to anyone. Her Uncle Richard, she afterwards heard, was obliged
to sit up till twelve o’clock. He had not been told she was in, so did
not think it right to lock up the house.
V
GERALD walked across the lawn to the lower tennis court, swinging
his racquet. Once he put up a hand and touched the back of his head,
but with assurance: it was perfectly smooth and round. His flannels
were gold-white in the sun; he almost shone. He smiled everywhere. It
was nonsense for him to pretend he did not care for parties; he went
everywhere, he liked to go out every day.
Everybody was sitting or standing about where the green slatted seats
were, at the edge of the shade. No one was playing yet; there were
two courts and eighteen players; they were discussing who was to play
first, their voices sharp with renunciation. Lois was nowhere; Laurence
sat on the ground smoking and taking no part in the argument. Lady
Naylor talked eagerly to a number of guests who, holding up parasols
very straight in the unusual sunshine and wearing an air of vague
happiness, were waiting for play to begin before settling down to
conversation. Livvy Thompson was organizing: as Lois’ friend she felt
this devolved upon her in Lois’ absence; also, she liked organizing.
“You and you,” she said shrilly, stabbing the air within an inch of
each player’s chest with a sharp forefinger, “and why not _you_ and
_you?_” But before she had ever finished arranging the second four,
the first would become involved again.
“Oh, Mr. Lesworth,” cried Lady Naylor, and waited for him to approach,
“if you really are coming out, would you bring some more rugs for some
more of the people to sit on?”
He turned and went back to the house. It seemed very odd about
Lois--now where could she be?
Livvy Thompson looked after him anxiously. Had not Mr. Armstrong come
also? During this temporary absence of her attention two fours arranged
themselves and walked hurriedly out to take possession of the courts.
The hall, very dark after sunshine, was full of wraps and racquet
presses; shoes had wandered away from each other under the chairs.
The rest of Gerald’s party--they had all driven out from Clonmore in
a hired motor--were still there, waiting for Mrs. Vermont. Captain
Vermont and David Armstrong stood holding her things while she powdered
her nose with difficulty before an antique mirror.
“Aren’t women awful?” she cried gaily, as Gerald rejoined them. She
knew the subalterns hated going about without her. “My dears, I do
wish I knew if we really were asked. Lois is so--I mean, well, you
know--vague, isn’t she?”
“Well, they wouldn’t mind, anyhow,” said David, and tried not to sound
proprietary.
“Aren’t they hospitable!” Betty Vermont was not disappointed in Ireland
after all. She had never before been to so many large houses with so
small a sense of her smallness. Of course, they were all very shabby
and not artistic at all. Mrs. Vermont used to say she longed to be
turned loose in any one of them with a paint-pot--white--and a few
hundred yards of some really nice cretonne from Barker’s.
“Half Ireland is here,” said David, looking out at the crowd of cars on
the gravel-sweep. “I doubt if we get any tennis.”
“Ah, well, David, there’s plenty of that at the club. Now, Gerald,
don’t stand there glaring! You _do_ disapprove of powder, you unkind
wretch!”
“Rather not,” said Gerald, beaming. But all the same he did like girls
to have natural complexions--he was perfectly certain Lois’s was. He
was carrying all the rugs he could find slung over his shoulder and
looked, she informed him, just like a Bedouin. This was not a thing she
could have said to every man, because really the East had become so
very suggestive. But he was the dearest boy, so absolutely nice-minded.
They all went out.
“There seem to be many more people here than I thought we’d asked,”
Lady Naylor was saying to Mrs. Carey of Mount Isabel. “Lois asks
people she meets at the Clonmore club, and then forgets. I have been
rather wondering about the raspberries; I’ve sent her out to the
garden to see about getting in some more. Colonel and Mrs. Boatley
are coming--she was a Vere Scott, a Fermanagh Vere Scott.... Why is
it that the Hartigans never will talk to men? I never think they give
themselves a chance, do you? Oh, Mr. Lesworth, how kind to think of
bringing the rugs out! And now there doesn’t seem anyone left to sit on
them.... Look, would you break up that party of girls on the bank; I
don’t think they seem to be sitting on anything, and anyhow they look
dull and would like to talk. And I am sure they’d be glad if you’d
smoke--the midges are terrible. Who is that girl in pale blue who’s
just coming out?”
“Mrs. Vermont. She--er--I think Miss Farquar--”
“Oh, well, never mind; it’s a pleasant surprise.” She went over to Mrs.
Vermont with enthusiasm. “I’m so glad you could come; it’s delightful.”
Gerald looked round everybody again, carefully. Then he respectfully
displaced the Miss Hartigans, spread out a rug on the bank and sat down
between them. He was at a disadvantage, he could not remember if he
had ever been introduced to them, whereas they were perfectly certain
he had been. They were pleased at his coming, though on the other hand
they were suffering so terribly from the midges that what they wanted
most at the moment was to scratch their legs peacefully.
“I call this a frightfully good party,” said Gerald, breezily.
“Yes, it’s most enjoyable,” agreed Norah Hartigan.
“I don’t think there’s anything like these tennis parties you have in
Ireland.”
“We have never been to tennis parties in England,” replied Doreen.
“Oh, you must certainly come over.”
“I dare say we should feel strange,” said Norah and her sister agreed
with her. Gerald smiled from one to the other so encouragingly that
they told him how a sister of theirs, who was not here to-day, had
once stayed for quite a long time near London, and had been taken by
an aunt, who was rather what they would call a London Society sort of
person, to a very fashionable party--in South Kensington it had been.
But their sister had not cared for the party, she thought the English
unnatural and said it was extraordinary how their voices sounded when
they were all shut up in the one room. “But excuse me,” concluded the
elder Miss Hartigan, turning away because she was afraid the talk was
becoming personal and scratching her ankle as discreetly as possible,
“we should not say this to you.”
“It was splendid of you to forget I was English. Well, we shall all be
leaving you soon, I dare say; all we jolly old army of occupation.”
“Oh, one wouldn’t like to call you _that_,” said Miss Hartigan,
deprecatingly.
“--As soon as we’ve lost this jolly old war.”
“Oh, but one wouldn’t call it a _war_.”
“If anyone would, we could clean these beggars out in a week.”
“We think it would be a great pity to have a war,” said the Hartigans
firmly. “There’s been enough unpleasantness already, hasn’t there?...
And it would be a shame for you all to go,” added Doreen warmly, but
not too warmly because they were all men. In fact, it was all rather
embarrassing, they fixed their eyes on the players firmly and wished
that the set would finish. They thought how daring it was of Mr.
Lesworth to come so far to a party at all, and only hoped he would not
be shot on the way home; though they couldn’t help thinking how, if he
should be, they would both feel so interesting afterwards. “Poor young
fellow,” they thought with particular tenderness because he was so
good-looking, and neither of them, with this tenderness in their eyes,
dared to look at him.
Livvy was walking along the top of the bank with David Armstrong. She
smiled, with a small tooth over her lower lip; the tip of her nose
quivered downward with feminine sensibility. “It is really a long time
since I have seen you, Mr. Armstrong.”
David was the nicest of all the subalterns; so agreeable. “Why, yes,”
he agreed, “I suppose it really must be.” He glanced at the brim of her
hat and added: “It has certainly seemed an awful long time to me.”
“Oh, you mustn’t say that,” cried Livvy; she blushed to the chin and
laughed.
“_I_ don’t see why I shouldn’t,” said David, alarmed but gratified.
“Well, I mean, you oughtn’t to say it _like_ that!”
“But I can’t help saying what I mean.” His manliness increased with
confusion. “I suppose I am that kind of fellow.”
“You _are_ awful!” Livvy laughed so much from the shock of David’s
behaviour that people sitting along the foot of the bank looked up
expectantly. She would not share him, she hurried him off at an
angle and then continued: “Why were you not at the Mount Isabel
bicycle gymkhana? I understood you to say that you would be. It was
the greatest pity you couldn’t be there, it was a grand gymkhana,
and they had a putting competition too. And they had sentries armed
in the avenue and made twenty-four pounds for the hospital. And the
priest’s niece from Kilnagowan fell off and cut her lip; she bled too
dreadfully, but Doreen Hartigan has her V.A.D. certificate. And two
hundred people sat down to tea--how was it now that you couldn’t be
there?”
“On duty,” said David, and took on a mystic and obstinate look. “I was
up with some of the men and an N.C.O. in those mountains the other side
of the Madder.”
Livvy felt in her spine, running down it from under her waistband, a
sharp little thrill. She felt all the soldiers’ woman, and said in a
glow: “Well, I call that too awfully dangerous.” He told her: “It’s
what we are here for.” They glanced at each other, then both were
embarrassed--and showed it--at what they had seen. She stooped, and her
hat was an elegant mushroom. From David’s complexion blushes cleared
slowly away--the last having never quite vanished into his hair before
another came after it up from his well-fitting collar.
“I can’t think what Lois can be doing.” She peered through gaps in the
shrubbery towards the gate of the garden. This concern for her friend
she put up and twirled like a parasol between them. She sighed: the
expansion of her thin little frame, the rise and fall of her two little
points of bosom were clearly visible under her white silk jersey. Her
panama hat turned down and light tufts of hair came out in fluttering
commas against her cheekbones. From under the brim her eyes looked,
slanting slightly up at the corners, with a veiled preoccupied kind of
inquisitiveness. She was inquisitive as to so many things her friend
Lois hoped one might not have to bother about. David watched her watch
the shrubbery for her friend and thought, with a shock, that this
really did seem a girl he was to be in love with. He had the fatalism
of a recurrent sufferer.
“It will be too bad,” continued Livvy, “if she doesn’t come soon.
You would think she might be picking those raspberries herself. You
see, all the people she asked from Clonmore have come and were not
expected. If she doesn’t come soon I must go--yes, indeed I must,
Mr. Armstrong--and see about the two next fours. You see, her cousin
Laurence is no good for that, he is so intellectual, and Lady Naylor
doesn’t much notice the tennis so long as the party goes off all right.
But it seems too bad she shouldn’t see Mr. Lesworth. I expect Mr.
Lesworth often speaks to you of her, doesn’t he, Mr. Armstrong?”
“Er--I don’t remember, really.”
“I think it’s wonderful to see a man so much in love. I must say I
often wonder what love feels like. I always seem to feel so natural
about the men I know. But I suppose that’s because I am so young--or
perhaps I was born platonic. Do you believe in platonics, Mr.
Armstrong?”
“Plato? Jolly old Grecian--what?”
“No, but listen--do you?”
“Well, what I think,” said David, looking carefully at his racquet
and turning it over and over--“of course it is awfully difficult to
express, but I think the right kind of girl and the right kind of
fellow can be almost anything to each other, if you know what I mean?”
“_I_ think,” said Livvy, “you put it rather wonderfully.” She suddenly
waved her racquet. “Ah--there’s Lois!”
Lois came down the shrubbery path from the garden startled, as if at
her own great speed, flushed and visibly breathless. A pink unbuttoned
cardigan slipped away at the shoulders, she had a hand in both the
pockets to keep it on. Her hat flapped back, it rose above her face
in surprise, like a wave. Behind her the bushes stirred in an almost
visible backwash. Over the laurels, cropped knee-high at the back of
the tennis court, her body rose and dipped with her long steps.
“Ah, here she is!” exclaimed several people, and all looked up the
bank uncritically and kindly. The dark air of the shrubbery glittered
with midges; she jerked her hands from her pockets and waved her way
through. Chinks of sunlight darted up her like mice and hesitated away
like butterflies. She had been looking down at the party, deployed in
all its promise, with greed and eagerness as at a box of chocolates;
eyes like a thumb and finger hovering to selection. Now, engaged by its
look, she became all profile; her step flattened, she would have liked
to crawl. She was, as Mr. Montmorency had noticed, very self-conscious.
The Hartigans said to Gerald: “Here comes Lois; isn’t she very
sweet-looking!” They smiled at each other across him.
He said “Rather!” pocketing their tribute gratefully, with simplicity,
as a small boy pockets a tip. His directness baffled them, they were
shocked--but he thought how nice they were. In his world affections
were rare and square--four-square--occurring like houses in a
landscape, unrelated and positive, though with sometimes a large bright
looming--as of the sunned west face of Danielstown over the tennis
courts. He did not conceive of love as a nervous interchange but as
something absolute, out of the scope of thought, beyond himself, matter
for a confident outward rather than anxious inward looking. He had
sought and was satisfied with a few--he thought final--repositories
for his emotions: his mother, country, dog, school, a friend or two,
now--crowningly--Lois. Of these he asked only that they should be
quiet and positive, not impinged upon, not breaking boundaries from
their generous allotment. His life was a succession of practical
adjustments, into which the factor of personality did not enter at
all. His reserve--to which one was apt to accord a too sensitive
reverence--was an affair of convenience rather than protection. Pressed
for a statement, he could have said, “I love her,” to the Hartigans,
Mrs. Carey, anyone there, without uneasiness, without a sense of the
words’ vibrations or alarm at a loud impact on something hollow. So he
looked up the bank at Lois, while the Hartigans watched him.
Mr. Montmorency sat on the ground with his knees apart, holding his
ankles limply. His grey flannel coat-collar was turned up over his
white shirt, as though a strong wind were blowing. He was being talked
to by ladies who sat above him on high green chairs, and though he
looked up to answer, it was never higher than their knees. He had more
than ever his waxen blinking look, as though exposed unnaturally to the
sunshine. His nostrils contracted slightly, as though the smell drawn
up from the roots of the grass in a perpetual hot shimmer were more
offensive than he cared to explain. He was to play in the next set,
and Laurence looked forward to a melancholy exhibition of departed
proficiency. A wiry tenseness and setting of teeth there would be,
Laurence anticipated, then balls going straight and cleanly into the
net. He would be the magnificent player of ten years ago, with little
painful grunts as point after point was given away. Laurence guessed
that Mr. Montmorency hated parties and conversation as much as he
himself did, but being less adept at evasion or honouring less fiercely
the virginity of his intelligence, could not escape from talking and
being talked to.
Laurence achieved this escape by sitting always with a social alert
expression between two groups, when one tried to claim him he could
affect to be engaged by the other.
A net had been carefully stretched behind the seats to prevent balls
going through to the shrubbery. But it was full of rents, and these
the balls, driven with force from the further back line, discovered
unerringly. To meet these deficiencies children up from the lodge were
on duty in the shrubbery; they stared and rambled, pushing among the
laurels. They got their teas, an excellent view of the party and a
halfpenny for every ball they recovered. Those who did not find any
balls and seemed disappointed were given halfpennies also. So why, as
Lady Naylor said, bother? She hated to see her guests go round the net,
smearing their nice white flannels.
But now, as three balls in succession fled through the leaves, she
broke off a conversation and cried: This was too much! Would some kind
person--she looked at Laurence--go round and help? He rose, reluctant:
simultaneously Mr. Montmorency went gratefully round the net at the
other end. He was followed by an anxious little boy called Hercules,
the only child among the guests and gravely _de trop_. They all three
met in the middle.
Laurence said--beating the bushes vaguely--“Imagine, sir, a small
resurrection day, an intimate thing-y one, when the woods should
give up their tennis balls and the bundles of hay their needles: the
beaches all their engagement rings and the rivers their cigarette
cases and some watches. The sea’s too general, an affair of furniture
and large boilers, it could wait with the graves for the big day....
Yes, Hercules, that is a tennis ball, but it is pre-war. Put it back
in the rabbit hole for the children to find; it is worth a halfpenny
to them.... Last term I dropped a cigarette case into the Cher, from
the bridge at Parson’s Pleasure. It was a gold one, left over from
an uncle, flat and thin and curved, for a not excessive smoker. It
was from the days when they wore opera cloaks and mashed, and killed
ladies. It was very period, very virginal; I called it Henry James; I
loved it. I want to see it rush up out of the Cher, very pale, with
eyeballs, like in the Tate Gallery. It wants a woman to be interested
in a day like that, to organize; perhaps the Virgin Mary? Don’t you
think, sir?”
Mr. Montmorency, startled at this address, replied: “I have never been
to the Tate Gallery.”
“Talking of being virginal, do you ever notice this country? Doesn’t
sex seem irrelevant?”
“There certainly are a great many unmarried women,” said Mr.
Montmorency, looking doubtfully through the net at the Miss Hartigans.
“It is: ‘Ah, why would we?’ And indeed why should they? There is no
reason why one should not, so one never does. It applies to everything.
And children seem in every sense of the word to be inconceivable.”
“My mother has five,” said Hercules, “I am the youngest. Hercules is a
family name because I am the only boy, but when I go to school I shall
be called Richard after my godfather, as everybody says that Hercules
even as an initial would be such a disadvantage to me, though not
nearly so bad as being afraid of bats.”
“I wonder you aren’t at school now,” said Mr. Montmorency.
“It would be holidays now anyhow, so I should be bound to be here. That
is my eldest sister, playing tennis. They do not see how I can possibly
go to school till I have got over being afraid of bats. Besides, I am
using up the end of my sisters’ governess.”
“Nobody could possibly be sorrier for you than I am, Hercules,” said
Laurence. “This is an unreal party.”
“Well, nobody brought you, I suppose,” said Hercules.
The strong and dreadful smell of laurels made them all irritable.
Hercules tore off the tips of bland leaves which kept slapping
against his forehead. Laurence came with a ball on his racquet to Mr.
Montmorency and said: “I am sure this is one that you lost with Uncle
Richard and poor John Trent and the man who did not go to Ceylon in the
summer of ’06.”
“Whereas, I did not go to Canada.”
“No, you never did, did you?”
Lady Naylor came and looked at them through the netting. “If between
you you cannot find any balls,” she said, “Laurence, you had better
please fetch that other box from the back hall. They are beginning a
new set with only three.”
“I have two here that seem quite clean, but they haven’t much bounce,”
said Hercules.
“Oh, that is splendid, you are a good little boy!” She took the balls
from him through a hole. “Here are a nice lot to go on with,” she
called out hopefully, rolling them to the court. Mr. Montmorency and
Laurence went on searching.
“Now take Aunt Myra; what does she think she’s doing?”
“If it comes to that,” said Mr. Montmorency, nettled, “what do you
think _you_’re doing? Why are you here at all if you don’t like it--as
Hercules said? I was happy here at your age, I was full of the place, I
asked nothing better. I ask nothing better now.”
“Oh,” said Laurence.
“However, I have no doubt you are right in being dissatisfied; I dare
say it is progress,” said Mr. Montmorency angrily. “I dare say it is
good for the race.”
Laurence, who did not consider that he had anything to do with the
race, replied with some indignation: “I have no money; where do you
expect me to get any money from? I was to have gone to Spain this month
with a man and last year I should have gone to Italy with another man,
but what do you expect me to go on? I have to eat somwhere, don’t I,
and here it is simply a matter of family feeling.”
“This is one of the balls; I shall throw it over.... I had no idea that
you were such a materialist.”
“I can’t help my stomach. Besides, I like eating, it is so real. But
I should like something else to happen, some crude intrusion of the
actual. I feel all gassy inside from yawning. I should like to be here
when this house burns.”
“Quite impossible; quite unthinkable. Why don’t you fish or
something?... Nonsense!” he added, looking warningly at the house.
“Of course it will, though. And we shall all be so careful not to
notice.”
“Are you the undergraduate of to-day?”
“I should love to be quite, quite abstract.”
Mr. Montmorency, offended by all this clever conversation, felt more
than ever his isolation, his homelessness. Life was to him an affair of
discomfort, but that discomfort should be made articulate seemed to him
shocking. The over-fine machinery of his mind ceaselessly strained and
caught and was agonizingly jerked over details. His refuge was manly
talk: he suspected Laurence. He said: “You are fortunate. There was
never a time when I had not other people to think about.”
Laurence, who immediately thought this womanish, said: “Oh yes, love.”
He flicked out and studied the word indifferently--coin of uncertain
value.
“Not entirely. One had a certain debt ...”
“Oh, yes, yes.”
Laurence became more formal, very much better mannered. He recalled
that the man was married, had given away his integrity, had not even
a bed to himself. The husband, glancing a last time through and under
the bushes, was negligible, diffused even a certain staleness. Laurence
sheered away mentally, moved further off through the shrubbery. He had
been talking foolishly, in his vein of the third or fourth quality, and
regretted now having talked still. He felt there had been something
morbid about his intrusion, as in a visit to a prison.
“I was to have played in that second set,” said Mr. Montmorency. “It
seems to be nearly over: perhaps I shall play in the third.”
“Tea will be coming, never forget tea.” Indeed, a move was being made
to the house already. Tea was too grave an affair to be carried out;
besides, one wasn’t accustomed to stability in the weather.
“Oh, Hugo, come out now, dear,” cried Francie, walking past with Mrs.
Hartigan. “I am sure it doesn’t matter about the balls. And the Trents
have come--don’t you see them? We are just going back to the house to
meet them now.”
“Archie? Splendid!” He burst from the shrubbery at the other side,
gained the path and hurried towards the house. At a turn of the path,
in an arch cut under some holly, he saw Gerald and Lois standing;
talking, looking down earnestly at their racquets. With her head bent,
Lois was like her mother. He stared, then passed them quickly.
But Lois did not notice him going by. She was saying: “I feel certain
you have illusions about me; I don’t believe you know what I’m like
a bit.” And while she spoke she counted the crimson strings in her
racquet: three down, six across.