The Last September Part 11

"How one talks!" said Marda.

Lois tied up the hand, she said it seemed like Providence that her handkerchief should be clean today. Marda's was coloured, that would never have done. One had always heard that dye ran into the blood.

"I don't think it would," said Marda. "It boils, it is really a good handkerchief ... This is the worst of big hands."

"I suppose they are rather big."

"Sorry we went in?"

"No."

"You are being nice to me ... One won't be girlish again-I think, as a matter of fact, we were being goatish."

"But I've had a ... a revelation," said Lois. She bent forward over the river, felt streaks of light fly over her face and felt that speech did not matter when so much was being carried past. "About Mr. Montmorency ... he's being awful about you, isn't he?"

The statement, almost a query, fluttered up at the end. But Marda's face was inscrutable with reflections. "About you. I had no idea-I was too d.a.m.ned innocent-" she explained with precision, "till we all stood in there and shouted. Hear him tell me I ought to be shot?"

"He was all-dishevelled. He had to be adequate."

"Oh, I didn't mind. But, I mean, aren't you rather -embarra.s.sed?"

"One can't help things."

"It was awful. I said, 'You and your old conceptions.' They are rather old, aren't they? ... I mean, really: he was in love with my mother."

"Well, I'm going away, aren't I?"

"But, I mean, what is the good of this? It doesn't make anything."

Marda said, inconsequent- "I hope I shall have some children; I should hate to be barren."

"Once I really meant to love him, but it would never have done."

Marda leant against Lois's shoulder. "You are wonderful!"

"Not so protected as you imagine."

"Nothing gets past your imagination."

"I wish," said Lois thoughtfully, "I had really been shot. But I couldn't be." Later she added, "I'm sorry I said that about Mr. Montmorency. What will become of him?"

"Nothing."

"I'm glad he wasn't my father."

"He couldn't be anything's father."

"Where shall you be this time tomorrow?"

"In the train."

"Funny," said Lois. "Queer." Her heart thumped, she looked at her watch. "Half-past six," she said. "It's harder, for some reason, to imagine what I'll be doing or where I shall be."

"A nice walk with Laurence, a nice cheerful squabble. If you want something to talk about, talk about me."

"No, no, I mean ... No." She looked up from the water. "You know," she said, "all this has quite stopped any excitement for me about the mill. It's a loss, really. I don't think I'll come down this part of the river again ... Will you have to tell Leslie? I don't think you ought to, a swear is a swear, isn't it, even in England."

Nothing would have induced Marda to confirm Leslie's opinion that her country was dangerous as well as demoralising. He hated to think of even his aunts at that side of the Channel. She expected, some forty-eight hours ahead, to be walking with him in a clipped and traditional garden, in Kentish light. Under these influences, she would be giving account of herself. Leslie's attention, his straight grey gaze, were to modify these wandering weeks of her own incalculably, not a value could fail to be affected by him. So much of herself that was fluid must, too, be moulded by his idea of her. Essentials were fixed and localised by her being with him-to become as the bricks and wallpaper of a home.

At present, the mill was behind her, tattered and irrelevantly startling, like a dream of two nights ago. And Lois kept turning upon her a tragic and obstinate gaze: she could sense a persistence of Leslie upon the mental scene. Lois said, but defeatedly: "He is certain to be suspicious."

"I certainly won't tell."

"So it will be a secret?"

"A perfect secret."

"Thank you so much," said Lois. As though breaking a spell, she shifted away down the parapet, put her feet to the ground, and was surprised to feel her legs trembling under her. "Here," she said generously, "comes Mr. Montmorency."

He came, "with demurest of footfalls." They smiled and shouted along the bank. Yes, they could come now; yes, they were feeling splendid. "Shan't we be late for dinner?"

"That is impossible!" shouted Mr. Montmorency, who was coming back to them looking formal and pleasant.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

MARDA was not due to leave until after lunch, but throughout that morning they were all distressed and sympathetic, could not settle down to anything, walked about the house. Every time Lady Naylor saw Marda she asked her if she ought not to be packing, and while Marda packed, with her door open, Lady Naylor kept looking in to remark how sad it was to see her thus engaged. Francie sat and sewed in the anteroom, looking anxiously up whenever anyone pa.s.sed. The rain fell, the windows were open, the rooms smelt of window-sills. Francie rolled up her work with a sigh and went up to tell Marda how sorry she was about the rain.

"You'll have a wet drive," she said.

"But the hood works," said Marda, folding together the sleeves of a scarlet dress.

"But rain is so sad when one's going away. Nothing, I mean, but a train to arrive at."

"But I really like trains; I am always talked to."

"Hugo will be so sorry, he has so much enjoyed talking to you."

"It's been very nice of him."

Sir Richard looked up Marda's train in a May timetable and was worried because he could not find it. Had she really any proof, he came up to inquire, that it had been put on since? Would she not be wiser to catch the 12.30 and have plenty of time for dinner in Dublin? Also, what was he to do about her suitcase if it ever turned up? But he almost feared now it would never turn up. He sighed and went back to the library.

Laurence sat in his room with a book with the door open; he could see across the landing into Marda's room. Evidently she could not make up her mind which hat to travel in: she tried on three and looked at herself in each. He did not care for her looks or her clothes, really; both were over-a.s.sured. But then he could not recall whose looks or whose clothes he did care for. Finally, he went across to say he did not want South Wind back, she could keep it to leave in the train, or simply pack it.

"Oh, thank you," she said, "do write my name in it."

He recoiled at this awful suggestion.

Her room had all come to pieces-dresses swirled on the bed, hats perched everywhere; she had lost the wedge from the mirror so that it wagged right forward, showing its blank side. She was taking more from the house than herself and her luggage.

"You will have a wet drive."

"The hood works," said Marda mechanically, throwing some rolled-up stockings out to make room for some shoes.

"Hasn't Lois been up?"

"I don't think so."

"What can she be doing?"

"Last time I saw her she was bouncing a tennis ball on the dining-room wall between the portraits. She says she has not much to do at present."

"Anything I can-?"

"Oh, if you'd write my labels-"

"I will indeed, but I hate block printing-need they-?"

"Well, I'm afraid I would rather-"

"Remarkably orange labels," said Laurence, taking the packet from her politely.

"Here is Livvy Thompson," he added, looking out of the window. "She must have ridden over to say goodbye."

"But I don't know her."

"She doesn't know that: you have met."

Marda leaned out and called her goodbyes to Livvy, who waved and shouted up to her that she would have a very wet drive. Marda withdrew, shutting the window abruptly.

"I am sorry," said Laurence, "that our young men will not have a chance to say goodbye to you."

"I've only met one of them-Gerald."

"Oh yes, you weren't here for our last party. What a very short time you have been here ... I hope you'll come back again soon-with your husband?"

"Thank you, it's very kind of you."

Laurence bowed and went away with the labels.

When Lois heard Livvy's voice on the steps she fled to the back of the house and hid in a box-room. Sir Richard had to tell Livvy he did not know where she was, last time he had seen her she had been sorting out some packs of old playing-cards in the drawing-room and seemed very busy. Livvy was much disappointed; however, she took her horse round, then sat in the hall to wait.

Lady Naylor-who had spared her attention to Marda with difficulty: this was a busy morning-was agitated by this development. She stood at the foot of the stairs, calling Lois.

"She doesn't seem to be anywhere," Francie at last called helpfully from the anteroom.

"But Livvy Thompson is sitting in the hall."

"Ask Hugo to find her."

"I can't find him either."

"Perhaps they have both gone out to the garden?"

"Not in all this rain."

Lady Naylor sighed, gathered up two of the kitchen kittens that were trespa.s.sing on the stairs and plunged away through a swing door. It was twenty to twelve: extraordinary how one's mornings went! Lunch was to be unnaturally early because of Marda's departure: evidently, Livvy would remain for it. She looked reproachfully into the library. But there Sir Richard was engaged with the herd, discussing the Darramore pig fair.

Meanwhile Lois was very melancholy in the box-room. The window was dark with ivy, she could not see out. The room was too damp for the storage of trunks that were not finished with anyhow; mustiness came from her mother's old vaulted trunks and from a stack of crushed cardboard boxes. On the whitewash, her mother, to whom also the box-room had been familiar, had written L. N., L. N., and left an insulting drawing of somebody, probably Hugo. She had scrawled with pa.s.sion; she had never been able to draw. Lois looked and strained after feeling, but felt nothing. Her problem was, not only how to get out unseen, but why, to what purpose?

She did not really know Marda well; to go up and offer to help her pack would surely appear unnatural?

Or worse, one might seem to be taking advantage of yesterday? One had been pa.s.singly intimate under the pistol's little acute, pig eye-but one had not spoken again of it. If she were free, she could search the rooms for something that looked plausibly Marda's-a magazine, a handkerchief-and bring it up. But then Livvy was unavoidable, varnished up to the height of a shine with love and bursting open with confidences like a cotton-pod. She was appalled by these thoughts of Livvy.

But Livvy was privileged. If she chose to announce her engagement even Sir Richard must stop and listen. It was a pa.s.sport at any frontier, that kind of announcement. Spurred by an impulse she did not examine, Lois picked up two cardboard lids and with infinite breathlessness crept from the box-room. Through the backstairs banisters she peered and listened. Lady Naylor had given up calling but could still be heard complaining to someone down in the bas.e.m.e.nt that she did not know where Lois could be.

Marda had finished packing but felt it would not be decent to reappear so soon. Especially when weather did not permit of the "last walk," a formal parade of the grounds with her host and hostess before lunch time. She was pleased to see Lois appear in the doorway.

"I brought up some cardboard in case you were packing photographs."

"But I haven't got any photographs."

"And you're packed ... Would you like me to sit on anything?"

"No, I think they will all shut."

"What about Leslie?"

"Oh, he is in talc-unbreakable."

"I say, I have never seen your engagement ring."

"Oh, yes, we must see the ring," called Laurence, from over the landing. Surprised by a sudden stillness inside the whirlwind, he had been settling down to a half-morning's work. But he came across and breathed on the ring with Lois, in an imitation of reverence, then returned to his work, shutting the door loudly. Lady Naylor was heard on the stairs again, talking to someone below as she came up. Lois uttered an exclamation of despair and dashed behind a window curtain. Lady Naylor came in with some cake in a cardboard box. She said she did not believe the train had a tea-car, but that Marda should be able to get a tea-basket at Ballybrophy. "But I am sure you won't care for tea-basket cake, we none of us do."

"Thank you so much-"

"My dear," said her hostess, "it is really a terrible pity about your hand. Especially as it's the left hand, as I'm afraid you will have to be conventional and start wearing your ring again now you are going to England. It is extraordinary, Marda, the way things happen to you."

"We must be thankful," said Marda, "that nothing worse has happened this time." Both thinking of Hugo they looked at each other benevolently, brightly and blankly. "At least she has not thought of that," they both thought.

Lady Naylor looked with surprise at Lois's feet.

"If you are hiding there," she said, "it is simply silly. I have been calling you everywhere. Livvy is waiting for you down in the hall."