MR. DAVENTRY arrived before the postman. He had not paid an unofficial
visit since he had been in Ireland; it seemed to him odd there should
be nothing to search for, nobody to interrogate. It was early, wet
tarnished branches came cheerfully through the mist. He had come to
the gate with a convoy on its way over to Ballyhinch; two lorries
had ground into silence and waited for him at the gate, alarming the
cottagers. He walked up the avenue lightly and rapidly: nothing, at
the stage things had reached for him, mattered. And superciliously he
returned the stare of the house.
He rang and made his demand. Lois came out slowly, dumb with all she
must begin to say--for who could an anxious waiting officer be but
Gerald? “Really ...” Lady Naylor had said, with a glance at the clock,
advising her to put down her table napkin. And Francie, smiling, had
covered up her egg for her.
“You?” she now said while everything, the importance of everything,
faintly altered. “Come and have breakfast.”
He told her that there had been a catastrophe yesterday, west of
Clonmore: a patrol with an officer and an N.C.O. had been ambushed,
fired on at a cross-roads. The officer--Lesworth--was instantly
killed, the N.C.O. shot in the stomach. The enemy made off across
country, they did not care for sustained fire, in spite of the hedges.
The men did what they could for the sergeant.
“Will he die?”
“Probably.”
“And Gerald was killed.”
“Yes. Would you--?”
“I’m all right, thank you.”
“Right you are.” He turned round and stood with his back to her. She
asked what time it had happened; he said about six o’clock. She thought
how accurate Gerald was and how anxious, last time, he had been to
establish just _when_ she had been happy because of him, on what day,
for how long. “They’d been out all the afternoon?” They both saw the
amazed white road and dust, displaced by the fall, slowly settling. “As
a matter of fact,” said Daventry, “we were mostly ready for things. I
don’t suppose--if he knew at all--it mattered.” “No, I don’t suppose,
to oneself, it ever would matter much.” But she thought of Gerald in
the surprise of death. He gave himself up to surprise with peculiar
candour.
“Thank you for coming.”
“I was passing this way anyhow.”
“But still, there was no reason why you should take the trouble.”
Daventry glanced at her, then at the gravel under his feet, without
speculation. Cold and ironical, he was a stay; he was not expecting
anything of her. He finally said: “It seemed practical. Would you like
me to--shall I just let the others know?” She nodded, wondering where
to go, how long to stay there, how to come back. Her mind flooded
with trivialities. She wondered who would go up to the tennis this
afternoon, if there would be anyone left who did not know, who would
expect him; she wondered what would become of the Jazz band. She saw
for days ahead she must not deny humanity, she would have no privacy.
“As a matter of fact, they are expecting me back to breakfast.”
But at the thought of Francie’s tender and proud smile, covering up
her egg, she was enlightened and steadied by grief, as at the touch of
finger-tips. She went into the house and up to the top to meet what was
waiting. Life, seen whole for a moment, was one act of apprehension,
the apprehension of death. Daventry, staring at her in memory--she was,
after all, a woman--went into the hall. Here, it pleased him to think
of Gerald socially circumspect under the portraits.
He waited. The dining-room door swung open on a continued argument;
they came out one by one, each on the threshold, balanced momentarily
like a ball on a fountain by the shock of seeing him. “Lady Naylor?”
he said to Francie. “Oh _no!_” she seemed appalled at the supposition.
“Isn’t ... Mr. Lesworth here?” “Not to-day.” Lady Naylor came last and
stared hardest: really, the Army seemed to be inexhaustible. He told
her. “Oh, no!” she said quickly, as though to prevent something. He
told her the circumstances. “Oh--_no_,” she repeated, and turned in
appeal to her husband. “That is ... that is too bad,” said Sir Richard
and in despairing confusion touched her shoulder. He looked back into
the dining-room at the chairs and plates and table, incredible in
their survival.
The fact was, they did not at all care for the look of Mr. Daventry.
They felt instinctively that he had come here to search the house.
Lady Naylor, still statuesque from the shock, made, even, a little
disdainful gesture, a kind of: “Here’s everything.” He, unconscious of
her impression of being brought to book, remained staring darkly and
piercingly past her. Behind her, across the dark dining-room, he saw
through a window the lawn striped with mist and sunshine. In Clonmore
it had rained that morning: they seemed to have escaped that too. She
said sharply: “Where’s Lois?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” he replied, indifferent.
“She--you have--?”
“Oh, yes.”
Her defensive dropped; she said with heartbroken eyes on his face: “You
know, we knew him so well. He came out here so often to tennis. It
seems queer that one can’t--that one never-- He was so--”
“Yes he was, wasn’t he?”
“His mother, he used to tell me about his mother. Who will write? I
should like to write to her. Yes, I want very much to write to her. I
think she might like--we did know him so well, you see-- Richard,
don’t you think I--?”
But Sir Richard had slipped away quietly; he was an old man, really,
outside all this, and did not know what to do. He was wondering, also,
about the Connors. Peter Connor’s friends--they knew everything, they
were persistent: it did not do to imagine....
Mr. Daventry said that was all, he thought; he must go now. He took
leave with unfriendly courtesy and went off abruptly, with an air that
obliterated them, as though he had never been into their house at
all. Then she exclaimed, recollecting herself: “_He_ must be unhappy;
I ought to have said something.” There was so much to do now, more
than would fit into a morning; she had some idea of postponing lunch.
And hearing the postman, she half thought, terrified by a sense of
exposure: “Suppose there should be a--suppose he should have--”
But there was no letter for Lois from Gerald.
No one was on the steps to hear the news from the postman; he went
away disappointed. Lady Naylor thought firmly: “Now I must go and find
Lois.” But she did not go; things seemed to delay her. She looked into
the drawing-room to see whether something--she wasn’t certain what--was
there. Francie, red-eyed, looked guiltily over the back of the sofa.
They did not say anything. The room became so sharply painful that Lady
Naylor almost exclaimed: “Lois has not done the flowers!”
It was Laurence who, walking about the grounds unguardedly, was exposed
to what they all dreaded. He came on Lois, standing beside a holly
tree. She could have moved away, but seemed not so much rooted as
indifferent.
“It’s all right,” she explained, and added: “I’m just thinking.”
His look became almost personal, as though he had recognized her. He
said: “I think I should. I expect--I don’t know--one probably gets past
things.”
“But look here, there are things that one can’t--” (She meant: “He
loved me, he believed in the British Empire.”) “At least, I don’t want
to.”
“Perhaps you are right,” he said, studying, with an effort of sight and
of comprehension, some unfamiliar landscape.
“Well, don’t stop, Laurence. You’re going somewhere, aren’t you?”
“Nowhere particular. Not if you--”
“No, I don’t specially. Though if it has to be anyone, you.”
Taking this for what it was worth, he went on, brushing awkwardly past
her against the laurels.
* * * * *
A fortnight later, Mrs. Trent drove over, the very evening of her
return from the North. She had been inexpressibly bored up there and
wished to complain. Lady Naylor, delighted, came out to meet her; it
was like old times again.
“The house feels empty. They’ve gone, you know.”
“Yes, dear me. I was sorry not to have seen the last of Hugo and poor
little Francie. What about their bungalow?”
“Oh, that was just an idea; they are quite off it. Bungalows inland
seem so pointless, cliffs are so windy and one cannot live on a flat
coast. No, they think now of going to Madeira.”
“Then they won’t un-store the furniture?”
“I don’t think so; they never cared for it much.”
“It’s a pity he never did go to Canada.” Mrs. Trent looked round at the
pleasant fields and lawns, the trees massive and tarnished, the windows
that from their now settled emptiness seemed to have gained composure.
Her sense of home-coming extended even to Danielstown. She went on:
“How’s Richard? And listen: are you getting in your apples?--we haven’t
begun. They never get anything done when I’m away. And tell me: how’s
Lois?”
“Oh, gone, you know.”
“_Gone?_ Oh, the school of art!”
“Oh no,” said Lady Naylor, surprised. “Tours. For her French, you know.
And to such an interesting, cultivated family; she is really fortunate.
I never have been happy about her French. As I said to her, there will
be plenty of time for Italian.”
“Oh, that’s splendid,” Mrs. Trent said vaguely but warmly. “Then of
course you must feel quiet. Did she and Laurence travel over together?”
“She seemed so offended at being thought incompetent and he was
worried at the idea of looking after her luggage, so we sent them over
separately; he crossed Wednesday, she Friday. Both nights, I hear,
it was rough.... Yes, it’s been sad here, lately; we’ve been so much
shocked and distressed about that unfortunate young Lesworth. I think
I felt it particularly; he had been out here so much and seemed so
glad to talk, and had come, in a way, to depend on one. Though it was
a shock, too, for Lois. You see they had really played tennis so often
and were beginning to be quite friends. She did not take it as hard
as I feared, girls of her generation seem less sensitive, really....
I don’t know; perhaps that is all for the best. And of course she has
so many interests. But it was terrible, wasn’t it; I still think: how
terrible. But he did have a happy life. I wrote that to his mother;
I said, it must always be some consolation to think how happy his
life had been. He quite beamed, really; he was the life and soul of
everything. And she wrote back--I did not think tactfully, but of
course she would be distracted--that it was _her_ first consolation to
think he died in so noble a cause.”
Mrs. Trent had for a moment an uneasy, exposed look. She said: “It was
heroic,” and glanced down awkwardly at her gloves. She missed a dog,
she felt unstayed, there was no dog.
“Heroic,” said Lady Naylor, and scanned the skies with eager
big-pupilled eyes that reflected the calm light. “Although,” she added,
half in surprise, “he could not help it.... But come in now and tell
Richard about the North, he will be amused, though sorry that you were
dull. To tell you the truth, we both rather feared you might be. Ah,
don’t mind the time, I’m sure it’s early; come in, come in!”
But Mrs. Trent could not, she was a punctilious person and wore a
wrist-watch. She had not even sent round her dog-cart to the back; a
man was walking the cob up and down the avenue. “A flying visit,” said
Lady Naylor mournfully, having prolonged the conversation by half an
hour. Then Mrs. Trent climbed briskly into the dog-cart and gathered
the reins up; they sighed at each other their resignation to parting.
“Then we see you on Tuesday. Be sure and come early, before the
Hartigans.” To the domestic landscape, Mrs. Trent nodded an approving
farewell. “Every autumn, it strikes me this place looks really its
best.”
“To tell you the truth, I really believe it does. There is something in
autumn,” said Lady Naylor. She remained on the steps looking after the
trap, her hands restlessly, lightly folded. Some leaves spun down from
the gate with a home-coming air.
The two did not, however, again see Danielstown at such a moment, such
a particular happy point of decline in the short curve of the day, the
long curve of the season. Here, there were no more autumns, except for
the trees. By next year light had possessed itself of the vacancy,
still with surprise. Next year, the chestnuts and acorns pattered
unheard on the avenues, that, filmed over with green already, should
have been dull to the footsteps--but there were no footsteps. Leaves,
tottering down the slope on the wind’s hesitation, banked formless,
frightened, against the too clear form of the ruin.
For in February, before those leaves had visibly budded, the
death--execution, rather--of the three houses, Danielstown, Castle
Trent, Mount Isabel, occurred in the same night. A fearful scarlet
ate up the hard spring darkness; indeed, it seemed that an extra day,
unreckoned, had come to abortive birth that these things might happen.
It seemed, looking from east to west at the sky tall with scarlet,
that the country itself was burning; while to the north the neck of
mountains before Mount Isabel was frightfully outlined. The roads in
unnatural dusk ran dark with movement, secretive or terrified; not a
tree, brushed pale by wind from the flames, not a cabin pressed in
despair to the bosom of night, not a gate too starkly visible but had
its place in the design of order and panic. At Danielstown, half-way
up the avenue under the beeches, the thin iron gate twanged (missed
its latch, remained swinging aghast) as the last unlit car slid out
with the executioners bland from accomplished duty. The sound of the
last car widened, gave itself to the open and empty country and was
demolished. Then the first wave of a silence that was to be ultimate
flowed back, confident, to the steps. Above the steps, the door stood
open hospitably upon a furnace.
Sir Richard and Lady Naylor, not saying anything, did not look at each
other, for in the light from the sky they saw too distinctly.