IT rained before lunch-time. Gerald heard loud drops come after him
as he went up the beech walk. Under every beech he expected to see
Lois looking round in surprise. When he heard a dog in the undergrowth
he turned, laughing with expectation. But it was the _louche_ yellow
dog from the lodge, intent on rabbiting. Soon a square black eye of
the house--three--four--looked down at him through the branches; he
came out under the whole cold shell of it, streaked with rain and
hollow-looking from an interior darkness. The yellow dog passed him,
looked back scornfully from the steps and pattered in at the door with
an air of possession. “Hallo!” called Gerald, looking about him.
But she was nowhere; the place was cold with her absence and seemed
forgotten. The tennis party became a dream--parasols with their
coloured sunshine, rugs spread, shimmer of midges, amiable competition
of voices. Something had now been wiped from the place with implied
finality. Gerald told himself it was all very queer, quiet; that it
was disappointing about Lois. He tugged the bell, a maid appeared in
surprise, did her back hair hastily, encouraged him in with a smile and
left him. The hall with staring portraits contracted round a glove on
the table--a grey suède gauntlet strapped at the wrist--he picked up
the glove and kissed it. But the house was full of ladies, the glove
might as well be Marda’s--he dropped it doubtfully.
A lovely mystery of feminine life: what did a young girl do with
herself in the mornings? Vaguely he pictured keyboards and pink ambling
fingers. He recollected those sage-green sexless covers of intellectual
books. He recalled the musty smell of work-boxes, the blush through
transparent paper of shell-pink needlework wrapped away hastily. You
never asked a girl what she was making.
He listened, took off his trench-coat, stepped to the drawing-room
door. The five tall windows stood open on rain and the sound of
leaves, rain stuttered along the sills, the grey of the mirrors
shivered. Polished tables were cold little lakes of light. The smell
of sandalwood boxes, a kind of glaze on the air from all the chintzes
numbed his earthy vitality, he became all ribs and uniform. He was
aware of intrusion. But he dared not go in unasked to the library,
where Sir Richard might well look up from writing, sharp with
pince-nez. He could not again face the hall--he was shy of the glove.
He took up the _Spectator_, read an article on Unrest and thought
of the Empire. Mechanically his hand went up to his tie. He looked
ahead to a time when it all should be accurately, finally fenced
about and all raked over. Then there should be a fixed leisured glow,
and relaxation, as on coming in to tea from an afternoon’s gardening
with his mother in autumn. He turned in thought to confident English
country, days like the look in a dog’s eyes, rooms small in the scope
of firelight, neighbourly lights through trees. He thought of a woman,
kind and palpable, who should never produce this ache, this absence....
A door dragged forward its portière; Lois came in from the dining-room,
brushing rain from her frieze coat. He stood for a moment in a kind
of despair at her agitation, as though he were trying to take her
photograph. Then he stepped forward and kissed her, his hands on her
wet shoulders.
“--Oh, but look here--” cried Lois.
But she was his lovely woman: kissed. He shone at her, she helpless.
She looked out at the hopeless rain.
“I love--” he said eagerly.
“Oh, but look here--”
“But I love--”
“What are you doing in the drawing-room?”
“I’ve come to lunch.”
“Do they know?”
“I haven’t seen anyone.”
“_I_ don’t know who to tell,” she said distractedly. “They have all
disappeared; they always are disappearing. You’d think this was the
emptiest house in Ireland--we have no family life. It’s no good my
telling Brigid because she forgets, and the parlourmaid is always
dressing. I suppose I had better lay you a place myself--but I don’t
know where the knives are kept. I can’t think why you are being so
sudden all of a sudden, in every way: you never used to be. I haven’t
even done the flowers yet. I do wish you wouldn’t, Gerald--I mean, be
so _actual_. And do be natural at lunch, or I shall look such a goat.
You really might have asked me, I never mind talking things over. But
now the gong will go at any moment. And how do you know I’m not in love
with a married man?”
“You wouldn’t be so neurotic; I mean, like a novel. I mean: do be
natural, Lois.”
“Don’t look so, so inflamed.... Miss Norton is here; she’s a girl--at
least a kind of a girl. She’s awfully attractive.”
“I think I met her. She’s awfully--well, not beautiful, but ... Oh,
Lois ...”
“Do be normal: do play the piano.”
“I can’t start playing the piano before I’ve even told them I’ve come
to lunch. I may be musical, Lois, but I’m not artistic.”
“All right,” she said, and walked away from him round the room. So
that was being kissed: just an impact, with inside blankness. She was
lonely, and saw there was no future. She shut her eyes and tried--as
sometimes when she was sea-sick, locked in misery between Holyhead
and Kingstown--to be enclosed in nonentity, in some ideal no-place,
perfect and clear as a bubble. Or she was at a party, unreal and vivid,
or running on hard sands. “It wouldn’t have mattered so much at the
seaside,” she said to Gerald.
“But we never are at the seaside.”
She opened a sandalwood box and looked in: three blue beads and a
receipt of her own from Switzers: three-and-eleven for yellow velvet
pansies, worn at a dance and spoilt. “It’s not even as though we were
at a dance,” she added.
“Lois, I’ve been thinking about you all night, up in the
mountains--right up there when you were asleep. You were wonderful.”
“Haven’t you been to bed at all?”
“No, you know I--”
“Oh, Gerald-- Oh ... darling-- But you did have breakfast?”
The gong sounded: great brass balls went bouncing about the empty
rooms. The parlourmaid looked in perfunctorily. “Lunch?” said Gerald to
Lois.
“No one is in--and I don’t suppose lunch is even ready. Gerald, _did_
you have breakfast?”
“An enormous breakfast at Ballydarra.... What were you saying, Lois;
what did you call me _then_ ... before the gong?”
But now she flushed and answered: “I’m sopping wet; I’m steaming, I
smell like a dog. I should have thought you would want me to go and
change. I should have thought you’d be--protecting.”
“You know I’d die for you.”
They looked at each other. The words had a solemn echo, as though
among high dark arches in a church where they were standing and being
married. She thought of death and glanced at his body, quick, lovely,
present and yet destructible. Something passed sensation and touched
her consciousness with a kind of weight and warmth; she glimpsed a
quiet beyond experience, as though for many nights he had been sleeping
beside her.
“What _did_ I say then? Say it.”
“‘Darling’ ...”
But she turned away from some approach in his look.
Lady Naylor and Mrs. Montmorency passed, in profile, under the three
west windows, pressed very close together under a green en-tout-cas,
discussing the vice-regency of the Aberdeens. Simultaneously, Mr.
Montmorency and Miss Norton were heard coming up the steps rather
breathlessly, talking about money. They must both have been conscious
of being a little vulgar, a little English, for as Sir Richard rattled
open the glass door and went out to meet them, they broke off flatly.
“You must have got very wet,” said Sir Richard. “Marda, about that
suitcase of yours. I have been thinking it over--”
“Sir Richard, I can’t bear you to--”
“My dear girl, a suitcase is a suitcase--I was just saying to Marda,
Myra, that I have been thinking over that suitcase of hers--”
“We had better have lunch at once,” said Lady Naylor imperatively.
“Miss Norton will have to change.”
“Hugo, how _could_ you let her get so wet!”
“My dear, I am not an umbrella.”
“Marda, how could you go out without a mackintosh!”
In the drawing-room Gerald walked to a window and stared at the rain in
perplexity, stroking the back of his head, looking rather an ordinary
kind of subaltern. Lois looked at herself in a mirror, then went out to
the hall to tell them about Gerald. Every one stared, she put up a hand
to her face. “Mr. Lesworth has come to lunch,” she said deprecatingly.
“You told him he could whenever he wanted, so I suppose he thought he
might.”
“Of _course_,” said Lady Naylor; “I suppose you have told Sarah?”
“Well, I don’t know where to find her; she is always dressing.”
“Of course she is not always dressing; should I keep a parlourmaid who
was? She only changes once a day, but you always go and look for her at
the wrong times. Where is Mr. Lesworth?”
“In the drawing-room.”
“How extraordinary! Wouldn’t he rather be in the library? Richard,
why didn’t you ask Mr. Lesworth into the library? I expect now he had
better wash.”
Lois went upstairs: Marda came up after her and took her arm; Lois
started. She could not think of anything to say, Marda was not even
trying; they went up silently. “Some time,” Lois said as they parted,
“can I show you my drawings? They’re fearfully bad.”
“Come up to my room after tea.”
Throughout luncheon, Sir Richard talked to Gerald about the South
African War and the Cork Militia. He liked the young fellow. Laurence
talked to Marda about whaling, Lady Naylor and Francie continued the
Aberdeens, Lois tried to explain to Hugo about Augustus John. The rain
stopped, they agreed that it had been only a shower. Lois and Gerald
were side by side, but they did not have to speak, they simply passed
things. The side of her next to Gerald felt numb.
“Raspberries?” she said towards the end of the meal, constrainedly.
“Please.” _He_ was not nervous at all. Queer, she confusedly thought,
how men throw off action without a quiver at severance from the self
that goes into it. They remain complete, the action hangs in the air
of the place, above the grass or furniture, crystallizing in memory;
eternal, massive and edged to the touch of thought as, to the bodily
touch, a grand piano. She herself felt bound to all she had done
emotionally. But his kissing of her, his attack, were no longer part of
him. He concentrated upon his raspberries, crushing them, on his cream
with carmine beautifully folding through, on his flushing sugar. She
watched the work on his plate. “Magnificent,” he said to Sir Richard,
agreeing about the Cork Militia.
Going out through the hall, Laurence offered Gerald a cigarette.
“American--extra mild.”
“Thanks--I--”
“How is your jazz band?”
“Very little practising; not much time, you see.”
“Do tell me: did you kill anybody?”
“How much?” said Gerald, startled.
“Anybody last night?”
“Oh, good Lord, no!”
“Isn’t that why you go out?”
“We were looking for arms, really. And nights you find the most
surprising people at home. We were after a fellow called Peter Connor:
we got him.”
“Fight?” said Laurence eagerly.
“He was at home, in bed. These blighters think we are greater fools
than we are.”
“Very cynical of him.... Oh, I say, Uncle Richard, Lesworth has
captured Peter Connor.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Sir Richard, flushing severely. “His
mother is dying. However, I suppose you must do your duty. We must
remember to send up now and inquire for Mrs. Michael Connor. We’ll
send some grapes. The poor woman--it seems too bad.” He went off,
sighing, into the library.
Gerald was horrified. His duty, so bright and abstract, had come
suddenly under the shadowy claw of the personal. “I had no idea,” he
exclaimed to Laurence, “these people were friends of yours.”
“Can’t be helped,” said Laurence. “I dare say he was a dirty dog....
If you hate that cigarette, Lesworth, have one of your own. It seems
a long time since we have seen you. How is this war of yours really
going? Do you realize I know nothing--this might all just as well be
going on in the Balkans. I sometimes rather wish that I were a gunman.
There are one or two things I should like to ask--but don’t let me keep
you if you want to talk to anyone else.”
“Rather not.”
The ladies were in the drawing-room laughing intimately, putting across
the open door a barrier of exclusion. Laurence and Gerald wandered
about the hall, taking note of each other indirectly and amicably.
Laurence was by three years the younger, but imposed his own impression
of seniority. Light hair tumbling, eyes startled open and limp grey
flannels, he looked to Gerald as though he had slept through the
morning. While Gerald circled, the grey glove lay on the table, its
fingers crisped in derision. Outside, in an irresponsible burst of
sunshine, the wet fields had a metallic brightness. Gerald thought of
Lois’s shoulders, their rounded squareness, the feel of wet frieze
under his grip. He was flattered but uneasy under Laurence’s interest,
which had indeed, for the simple, the awkward menace of some one
preparing to cast a net. He pursed his lips to a whistle and shrugged
slightly.
“For instance, what do you, personally, think about all this?”
“Well, my opinion is--”
“Oh, but I don’t want your opinion, I want your point of view.”
“Well, the situation’s rotten. But right _is_ right.”
“Why?”
“Well ... from the point of view of civilization. Also, you see, they
don’t fight clean.”
“Oh, there’s no public school spirit in Ireland. But do tell me--what
do you mean by the point of view of civilization?”
“Oh--ours.”
Laurence smiled his appreciation: the conviction, stated without
arrogance, had a ring of integrity. Gerald, embarrassed by this
benevolence, had recourse again to the back of his head, so
gratifyingly polished. “If you come to think,” he explained, “I mean,
looking back on history--not that I’m intellectual--we _do_ seem the
only people.”
“Difficulty being to make them see it.”
“--And that we have what they really want ... though of course the more
one thinks of it all, the smaller, personally, it makes one feel.”
“Oh? I don’t feel small in that way. But I’m not English--”
“Oh, no--I beg your pardon.”
“--Thank God.”
“Don’t understand?”
“God may. Shall we look for the others?”
Gerald, shocked, preceded Laurence into the drawing-room. Their
conversation, torn off rough at this edge, seemed doomed from its very
nature to incompletion. Gerald would have wished to explain that no
one could have a sounder respect than himself and his country for the
whole principle of nationality, and that it was with some awareness
of misdirection, even of paradox, that he was out here to hunt and
shoot the Irish. His alertness was blunted, while he approached the
ladies, by a slight stupor of effort; he was groping for something
Napoleon had once said, something remarkably neat and apposite that
Gerald had once copied into a pocket-book. Laurence had not hoped to
explain, but had wished that Gerald could infer, that there was a
contrariety in the notions they each had of this thing civilization.
As a rather perplexing system of niceties, Laurence saw it; an exact
and delicate interrelation of stresses between being and being, like
crossing arches; an unemotioned kindness withering to assertion selfish
or racial; silence cold with a comprehension in which the explaining
clamour died away. He foresaw in it the end of art, of desire, as it
would be the end of battle, but it was to this end, this faceless but
beautiful negation that he had lifted a glass inwardly while he had
said, “Thank God!”
Gerald knew that no one who spoke of God in that family way could
have any belief. He had heard that Oxford was full of Socialism, of a
wrongness that was the outcome of too much thinking, and in the light
of this it did appear to him that Laurence’s conversation had been
decidedly Sinn Fein. But he liked and respected Lois’s cousin, who
made a man of one by that naïve curiosity as to bloodshed--curiosity
to which Gerald had been a stranger since the days of the _Boy’s Own
Paper_ spread on the nursery floor. Also, he could not have looked so
consistently bored at parties if he had not been, as they all said,
very intellectual.
Lois, watching Gerald approach with an absence of smile that was almost
a shadow, was certain she must have done him injustice. His constraint
(the pursuit of Napoleon) had a rather grave beauty. Their kiss under
the high ceiling must be present and palpable to him also. Aware of
some growth of manliness in him, she wanted the feel of his lips again,
to capture what she had missed before. And a quick glance of Marda’s
from one to the other sealed their mood with a recognition.
“Can’t we go out?” she said generally, for Gerald to take up.
“It will rain again in a minute,” said Lady Naylor, glancing cynically
at the weather. And indeed a few drops already sparkled against the
sunshine. “Also I particularly want to talk to Mr. Lesworth. When he
comes he is always playing tennis, or I forget. But now there are some
things I really want to ask him ... I really want his point of view ...”
She sat down in a faded bowery chair, settling herself with a rustle
of expectation. Francie, attracted, trailed her skirts and her fancy
work down the sofa; Marda, putting a new cigarette in her holder,
leaned over the back. From the constellation of eager faces Lois
wandered away. The three were no more her enemies than were her own
irresolution or the bright vicious raindrops blotting the pane. Yet
their unforeseen combination defeated her finally. She yawned at the
outlook.
“Lois, don’t yawn,” said her aunt. “Now I want to know, Mr. Lesworth,
what Colonel Boatley really thinks of reprisals. Of course it will go
no further, though you mustn’t think I want you to be indiscreet....
Laurence, just shut the door.”
Laurence shut himself out. And Gerald, sitting down with a sigh, said
that of course it was all rather a problem. He caught Marda’s eye, dark
and bright with amusement, and read there the doom of his afternoon.
“Yes? Yes? Yes? This is so interesting--you were asking me, weren’t
you, Francie, and I said we would ask Mr. Lesworth.... Marda, do
listen, dear, never mind, shake your ash on the carpet, you mustn’t
miss this. Because these days when so much nonsense is talked on both
sides I do feel one owes it to speak on some good authority--unless Mr.
Lesworth would rather we didn’t. Now please go on!”
And Gerald, half hypnotized, consciously barren and not in his
Colonel’s confidence, repeated to them what he had read in the _Morning
Post_. As Lady Naylor said at the time, no one would dream of taking
the _Morning Post_ seriously, it was so anti-Irish, but an opinion
on it from anyone so much “in things” as Mr. Lesworth was well worth
hearing. And as she said afterwards, it was extraordinary how no amount
of experience shook these young Englishmen up. Their minds remained
cutting-books.