The Last September Part 10

Lady Naylor sighed. "Unfortunately, Marda must go back to England. I don't know what we shall do without her... ."

"Do you like England?" said Nona Carey, moving away from Smith. "Are you really going to live there? I always think it's so new-looking. But of course there's a great deal going on ... Where do you live, Mr. Smith?"

"Eastbourne."

Although Lady Naylor said at once that that must be very bracing, Smith wilted under a general commiseration. He recrossed his legs, frowned at the toe of his shoe and said he thought sometimes of going to East Africa. A forlorn and slighted feeling the announcement of Marda's departure cast over them was heightened by this proposed defection of Smith's. Lady Naylor remarked disparagingly that that would be rather lonely, while Mrs. Carey, seeing Smith at once against hot African skies in a silhouette of n.o.bility, felt they had been unkind and asked him to come over here on the sofa and tell her about himself. He told her. Nona sat and twirled on the music stool.

"Smith," said Laurence, "you ought to stay and defend us." And Smith had to promise he would not leave the Army and go to East Africa till they were all settled.

But to Laurence and Lois this all had already a ring of the past. They both had a sense of detention, of a prologue being played out too lengthily, with unnecessary stresses, a wasteful attention to detail. Apart, but not quite unaware of each other, queerly linked by antagonism, they both sat' eating tea with dissatisfaction, resentful at giving so much of themselves to what was to be forgotten. The day was featureless, a stock pattern day of late summer, blandly insensitive to their imprints. The yellow sun slanting in under the blinds on full-bosomed silver, hands balancing Worcester, dogs poking wistfully up from under the cloth, seemed old, used, filtering from the surplus of some happy fulfilment; while, unapproachably elsewhere, something went by without them.

Marda wanted more tea-but they were all distracted, an argument raged round Smith. "You must, of course, go on Monday?" said Laurence, taking her cup. "Oh yes-why?" She leaned back from the bar of sun, into the shade of the curtains. Shadow gave transparency to her colours; its brown clarity hardened her face revealingly so that she was exposed a moment, in her anxiety, without the defence of manner. Her green linen dress went ghostly against the cretonne's rather jarring florescence.

"Just when it's fine," said Laurence, ba.n.a.l with sincerity.

"That is because I'm going."

He listened a moment and, as the uproar of argument was sustained, said quickly, "Lois and I aren't a good addition-the Montmorencys think so. Is that what bored you? n.o.body's ever gone so soon. There was a walk I wanted to take you." He rattled the cup and saucer at her in desperation. "I think you make a mistake, going."

"Oh, I expect so, but-"

"Look at Lois, her eyes are starting out of her head. When you've gone, she'll go up and cry on your bed. It will fill her mornings."

"Oh, shut up, she can hear you."

"No," said Laurence, "she can't, though she's trying to. I'm not so sorry, but I do think it's unimaginative of you, going. Why have you got to see Mr. Lawe? I mean, quite dispa.s.sionately, isn't there heaps of time for him? ... You see," concluded Laurence, "I am enraged-by all this-past snubbing point."

"I want some more tea," said Marda, "more than anything in the world."

Unable to attract the attention of their hostess, Laurence leaned over the tray and took the teapot. On his way back to Marda he guessed from the unmoving intentness with which she was staring out at the begonias-they gave back little vermilion flecks to her eyes-that there was someone at the bottom of this and that it was Mr. Montmorency. He had learnt- from leaning out of his window while his aunt confided in Mrs. Montmorency down on the steps-that they all thought she contemplated breaking off her engagement. Personally, he thought this improbable. Mr. Montmorency himself was the supreme objection; but also she would be getting herself a good home and what went with it-money, a.s.surance and scope. He himself only wished he could do so as easily. He now stood above her holding the cup of tea and could have counted three before she turned round. But then-oh, the waste of his comprehension-he saw she was laughing.

She had laughed at a thought of the subdued surprise with which they would come to her wedding; barely dressed as befitted because of that unshaken disbelief in her; b.u.t.toning, till well up the aisle, their white gloves. But the origin of their disbelief did not seem to her funny; had acquired for her, in fact, a tragic vulgarity. So that she did not explain the joke to Laurence; she thanked him and drank the tea, which was all wrong.

Out, at last, through the window, dazzled, threading and separating between the flower-beds, the party dispersed with their cigarettes. Large to themselves, to each other graduating from a little below life-size, to an eye from the mountain antlike-but smaller and less directed-or like beads tipped out. A sense of exposure, of being offered without resistance to some ironic uncuriosity, made Laurence look up at the mountain over the roof of the house. In some gaze-of a man's up there hiding, watching among the clefts and ridges-they seemed held, included and to have their only being. The sense of a watcher, reserve of energy and intention, abashed Laurence, who turned from the mountain. But the unavoidable and containing stare impinged to the point of a transformation upon the social figures with orderly, knitted shadows, the well-groomed gra.s.s and the beds in their formal pattern.

Driving home, rather tightly packed hip to hip in the back of the car between Marda and Lois and b.u.mping conjointly over the inequalities of the road, Lady Naylor told them of a discovery she had made. Mrs. Carey, also, did not understand modern young people. They seemed, Mrs. Carey had said, to have no idealism, no sense of adventure, they thought so much of their comfort-possibly Mrs. Carey was wrong? But almost she thought she agreed with her. In their youth, Mrs. Carey and she would have been deeply excited by all that was happening round them. Lady Naylor thought all young people ought to be rebels; she herself had certainly been a rebel. But since the War they had never ceased mouching. She herself had had a deep sense of poetry; she remembered going to sleep with Sh.e.l.ley under her pillow. She used to walk alone in the mountains and hated coming in to meals. Mrs. Carey had noticed that Nona would not miss a meal for anything-she was unpunctual always but never absent. But perhaps Mrs. Carey misjudged the girl? Mrs. Carey and she had pa.s.sed through periods of profound unhappiness. And yet their youth was a golden period; they would not have missed it. It did seem a pity, they both had agreed, to be born middle-aged.

These last remarks were directed with a degree of resentment at Laurence's back-view, in the front of the car by the chauffeur. His ears, of unfortunate conformation, curled out semi-transparent against the evening light. Laurence said nothing, but thought: he must write that novel, for here lay a gold mine (then Spain and those first editions, a Pica.s.so and curtains for his rooms). He would vindicate modern young people for his aunt and her generation. Only he did not know if he should write about c.o.c.ktail parties or whimsical undergraduates.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

HUGO was dumb, his companion inattentive to him in silence. They walked, that Sunday evening, on the turf of the Darra valley, along the edge of the water: he beat with his stick at the gold, strident ragwort. At every flash of the stick she glanced in surprise, but did not say: "Spare them!" Lois, straggling behind, threw in twig after twig to the swollen, hurrying Darra; ran a short way with each in intense excitement, lost it and threw in another. She seemed absorbed but remotely dependent, like one of the dogs. If she had fallen in with a loud enough splash and a cry she might have distracted the couple ahead, but she was sure-footed and not quite certain enough of herself to fall in on purpose.

Recollections of Laura were now wiped for him from the startlingly green valley, leaving the scene dull. Not a turn of the rocks with the river, not a break-down of turf along the brink, not the Norman keep with perishing corners (where they leaned and quarrelled till Laura had wished aloud it would fall on them) gave back to him what they had taken of that eroding companionship. He and she might never have come here; they were disowned. The sharp rocks breaking out from the turf, the impa.s.sive speed of the water were naked and had to be seen as themselves, in some relation excluding him; like country seen from the train, without past or future. And, having given proof of her impotence to be even here, Laura shrank and drew in her nimbus, leaving only, as in some rediscovered diary of a forgotten year, a few cryptic records, walks, some appointments kept, letters received and posted.

He now guessed, in fact, he had never loved her. Shocked, but with an enlivening sense of detachment, he turned to Marda-and still had nothing to say. She walked rather too quickly beside him, with long steps. She was leaving tomorrow; she was to be in England indefinitely: she seemed content. And for this, his anger, released from Laura, settled upon her. He loved her, a sense of himself rushed up, filling the valley. The rocks again were trans.m.u.ted: broken all over in planes of light, a defeated sharpness, they were no more limestone.

"Mrs. Montmorency knows Leslie's aunt," said Marda suddenly. "Do you? It seems so extraordinary."

"If I ever did, I've forgotten her."

"She's so nice."

"I have no doubt."

"Let's ask Lois to come and talk to us."

"She seems quite happy. Where do you go-after tomorrow?"

"Oh, Kent. Doesn't it seem extraordinary?"

Having given the matter rather too marked attention, he p.r.o.nounced that her sense of the extraordinary seemed to himself extravagant. She agreed there did seem to be some disparity in their outlook. "Disparity!" he cried out. "Everything! What a good thing we shall never need to understand each other!"

"I never try to understand anybody," she said mildly.

"No, indeed," he replied with sarcasm. "Who is worth it?"

At this she looked back again for Lois. She remembered Francie, seeing them off from the steps in a pink blouse, and the look that fluttered after them down the avenue. No wonder Francie looked like a windflower-her husband had this unfortunate ability to be young at any time. His unordered moods gave him the churlishness of a schoolboy; his silliness embarra.s.sed her. Yet anger did illuminate him becomingly: brighter and harder, for the first time he could be conceived as lovable. Though in this personal atmosphere generated by his temper she was feeling least herself, most nearly negative.

"I should like to go over there," she said, looking across the water to where trees began on a skyline and - went down steeply, powdered yellow with light on their tops.

"We can't," he said, triumphant, "the stepping-stones are covered." He showed her a line of faint scars, a hesitation across the current.

"I never thought of there being stepping-stones. I only wanted to cross because we couldn't. Why does one always seem to be on the wrong side?"

"I should have thought you never were-don't you even make rather a point of that?"

She was exasperated past caution. "Mr. Montmorency, what is the matter?"

Seeing that he had over-reached himself, been absurd, he raised his eyebrows in courteous mystification ("Matter?"), did not reply but began talking about his travels-the greenest river he knew was the Aine, he said; had she ever looked down on the Aine? -an appointment he had held in the North (a deterrent from travel), his five years in London (release from the North), a business enterprise with which he had once been connected. It had never been sound, he now saw, he said, but had once had a chance of success. She took him as he had intended, as the practical man manque. They discussed the question of Canada, whether he would have succeeded. She thought, emphatically, it was a pity he had not tried. "But my wife's health-" "Oh yes, Mrs. Montmorency... ."

"The fact is, I have not made her happy."

"She would always be happy a little, she is wonderfully unselfish."

"Do you mean-"

"Oh, what is that? The ghost of a Palace Hotel?"

The mill startled them all, staring light-eyed, ghoul-ishly, round a bend of the valley. Lois had to come hurrying up to explain how it frightened her. In fact she wouldn't for worlds go into it but liked going as near as she dared. It was a fear she didn't want to get over, a kind of deliciousness. These dead mills-the country was full of them, never quite stripped and whitened to skeleton's decency: like corpses at their most horrible. "Another," Hugo declared, "of our national grievances. English law strangled the-" But Lois insisted on hurrying: she and Marda were now well ahead.

The river darkened and thundered towards the mill-race, light came full on the high f.a.gade of decay. Incredible in its loneliness, roofless, floorless, beams criss-crossing the dank interior daylight, the whole place tottered, fit to crash at a breath. Hinges rustily bled where a door had been wrenched away; up six storeys panes still tattered the daylight. Mounting the tree-crowded, steep slope some roofless cottages nestled under the flank of the mill with sinister pathos. A track going up the hill from the gateless gateway perished among the trees from disuse. Ba.n.a.l enough in life to have closed this valley to the imagination, the dead mill now entered the democracy of ghostliness, equalled broken palaces in futility and sadness; was transfigured by some response of the spirit, showing not the decline of its meanness, simply decline; took on all of a past to which it had given nothing.

Rooks disturbed the trees, disturbed the echoes. "Don't go in!" cried Lois and clutched Marda's arm convulsively.

"Come on," said Marda, "I feel demoralised, girlish. Let's hide from Mr. Montmorency." Lois shied through the gateway with more than affected nervousness. This was her nightmare: brittle, staring ruins. Mr. Montmorency, disgruntled, still dawdled by the river; the idea of escape appeared irresistible. But the scene seemed strangely set for a Watteau interlude. Inside the mill door, a high surge of nettles; one beam had rotted and come down, there was some debris of the roof.

"If he starts shouting," Lois said, apprehensive, "he'll certainly bring the mill down, Oh, I can't come in, oh, I can't possibly. Oh, it's beastly here; I feel sick. I think you are quite mad!"

"I think you're a shocking little coward."

"I'm not afraid of anything reasonable. But I'm simply nervous; one can't help that."

"Come in through that door."

"But it's so high."

Marda put an arm round her waist, and in an ecstasy at this compulsion Lois entered the mill. Fear heightened her gratification; she welcomed its inrush, letting her look climb the scabby and livid walls to the frightful stare of the sky. Cracks ran down; she expected, with detachment, to see them widen, to see the walls peel back from a cleft-like the House of Usher.

"Hate it?" said Marda.

"You'd make me do anything."

The sun cast in through the windows some wild gold squares distorted by the beams; gra.s.ses along the window-sills trembled in light. Marda turned and went picking her way through the nettles; there was a further door, into darkness-somewhere, a roof still held. "Marda, help: here's a dead crow!" "Tchch!"

"But it's very dead!" Shuddering exaggeratedly, leaping in a scared way over the nettles, Lois also made for the dark doorway, eager for comment, contempt, consolation. She was a little idiot-appealing, she felt quite certain, to a particular tenderness.

In the dark of a lean-to, Marda was moving dimly. "Stairs!" she exclaimed with interest. Then she was back in a flash and stood in the door, barring it. She stood intently; menace gathered about her att.i.tude.

"What?" whispered Lois.

"Ssh-someone's asleep here."

"Perhaps they're dead?" Lois stared past Marda's shoulder into the darkness, and appalled and desirous, laughed; then clapped the back of a hand to her mouth-unnatural gesture adequate to the drama. Gradually, she was able to see a man lying face downwards, arms spread out; a coat rolled into a pillow under his face, which was twisted sideways to a clump of nettles; the knuckles must have been stung quite white. He could not feel the nettles-one had to imagine sleep like that! Behind him, stairs went up into visibility, to a gash of daylight.

Ashamed, the two young women stood elbow to elbow. Marda stepped back, some plaster crackled under her heel.

"What's that?" said the man gently.

"Come away quickly-come-"

But the man rolled over and sat up, still in the calm of sleep. "Stay there," he said persuasively: a pistol bore out the persuasion. They were embarra.s.sed at this curious confrontation. Neither of them had seen a pistol at this angle; it was short-looking, scarcely more than a b.u.t.ton. The man sat looking at them with calculating intentness, like a monkey, then got up slowly: the pistol maintained its direction.

"Don't be silly," said Marda. "Go to sleep again. We're not-"

"Are there any more of yez?"

"One-not interested either. Better let us go now, there will be less talk."

"We're just out for a walk," said Lois, surprised at her own voice.

"Indeed," said the man. "It is a grand evening for a walk no doubt. Is it from Castle Trent y'are?"

"Danielstown."

The man looked from one to the other, then ironically between them. His face was metal-blue in the dusk and seemed numbed into immobility. "It is time," he said, "that yourselves gave up walking. If yez have nothing better to do, yez had better keep within the house while y'have it."

Marda, a hand on the frame of the doorway, remained unmoved, but Lois could not but agree with him. She felt quite ruled out, there was nothing at all for her here. She had better be going-but where? She thought: "I must marry Gerald." But meanwhile Marda, holding her arm all the time, had softly, satirically pressed it. They could not but feel framed, rather conscious, as though confronting a camera. The man, who did not cease to regard them with uneasy dislike, asked which way they had come, whom they had met, if they had observed any movement of soldiers about the country. He remained dissatisfied; evidently they had the appearance of liars.

Meanwhile Mr. Montmorency, suspicious of merriment somewhere and determined to humour no one, had sat down to smoke on a parapet. From its base, the bank descended; the river rushed loudly, dark with its own urgency, under his dangling feet. The mill behind affected him like a sense of the future; an unpleasant sensation of being tottered over. Split light, like hands, was dragged past to the mill-race, clawed like hands at the brink and went down in destruction. He looked to the opposite hill, its distinct and peaceful trees. Marda belonged there and might be imagined composedly walking. Knocking some ash off, he leaned forward and groaned at the intervening water- "On the wrong side,"- He missed Francie; there welled up in him one great complaint to Francie. She-selfless woman-would non-committally rustle; some tender fidgeting always relieved her intentness of listening. Distressed for her husband, she would let out little sighs. He would tell her everything ... Yet he could not, for Marda was everywhere present, a clear ruddy-white mask of surprise. She impinged on the whole of him, on his most intimate sense of himself, with her cool sombre amus.e.m.e.nt. Had she a ghost everywhere? -there was something of her in Francie.

"It is like this," he began to rehea.r.s.e, "what I need is-"

A shot, making rings in the silence. Ear-drums throbbing, he gathered up the reverberations with incredulity. A battle-a death in the mill? Whose death? He leapt to one thought, a flash of relief in the panic. The front of the mill-he ran round to it- grinned with vacancy: corpse of an idiot. He steadied himself in the door, watched his cigarette drop into the nettles, then stumbled in over the debris. A crow's flight, stooping wildly among the rafters, dislodged a trickle of plaster. He paused in the well of ruin, terrified for them all. The crow swerved out through the roof.

"Marda!"

"All right," said Lois. They appeared in a doorway and looked at him gravely and rather suspiciously. Marda put up a hand to her mouth-in an incredible half-glimpse, he thought he saw blood round the lips.

Something released in his voice, he said: "Marda- for G.o.d's sake-"

Lois, as though the mill were falling, went white, then crimson. He had, distantly, some apprehension of an emotional shock. Marda, perplexedly, continued sucking her hand. Then she took Lois's handkerchief, dabbed at her knuckles, wiped the blood from her lips -where no more came-returned to her knuckles. "I lost some skin," she said at last resentfully. "Just a pistol went off-you heard?-by accident. I seem to have lost some pieces of skin."

"Let me go past," he said violently.

"We swore-" began Lois.

"Someone went upstairs backward, not very steadily, not having eaten much for four days. There was some plaster-the pistol went off, naturally. It was silly, really. Look at my beastly hand-I was holding on to the door."

"Let me get past-"

"But we swore, Mr. Montmorency-"

"You deserve to be shot!" He turned in a manner terrifying to all of them-most of all to himself-on this interruption. "You don't seem to see, you seem to have no conception-"

"Then why sit there and smoke?" said Lois, trembling. "I saw you-you and your old conceptions." "Shut up," said Marda, "oh, do shut up!" "Don't stand there, let me go past; I'll-"

"Oh, do let's talk about something else."

"We swore," went on Lois priggishly. "There never was anybody, we never saw anybody, you never heard-"

But n.o.body listened. Vaguely, he waved her silent."The fact is," said Marda, "we are neither of us good at explosions. Perhaps if we sat down and thought it over? Perhaps if you went for a walk-not up in the trees?"

"No more hide-and-go-seek," he said, playful with fury. "Still bleeding-?"

"Not like I can-I have rather a high standard. Do you remember the sc.r.a.per? No, I might have done- this-on the broken edge of a slate: it will be the edge of a slate, if you don't mind. And, being me, it was bound to happen."

He was set on transgressing the decencies. "Don't you realise, you might have been-"

Marda laughed, coming out through the door of the mill beside him. He looked at her lips-no higher-angrily-burningly. Lois looked quickly away. She thought how the very suggestion of death brought this awful unprivacy.

They took his place on the parapet. Warily, they watched him walk back the way they had come, with effort, as though breasting a current. Lois took up his forgotten matchbox, shook it and put it away in her pocket. Their s.e.x was a stronghold, they had to acknowledge silently; traditionally, one could always retreat on collapse. Mr. Montmorency having taken away with him any element of agitation, they were left with a particular sort of shyness.