The Last September Part 2

He had, as a matter of fact, been looking at her, but without intention and with a purely surface observation of detail. When she turned away, the light from behind ran a finger round the curve of her jaw. When she turned his way, light took the uncertain dinted cheek-line where, under the eyes, flesh was patted on delicately over the rise of the bone. Her eyes, long and soft-coloured, had the intense br.i.m.m.i.n.g wandering look of a puppy's; in repose her lips met doubtfully, in a never determined line, so that she never seemed to have quite finished speaking. Her face was long, her nose modelled down from the bridge then finished off softly and bluntly, as by an upward flick of the sculptor's thumb. Her chin had emphasis, seemed ready for determination. He supposed that unformed, anxious to make an effect, she would marry early.

"Danielstown can't have been so exciting when you were here before," said Lois to Mrs. Montmorency.

But Mrs. Montmorency, in an absence of mind amounting to exaltation, had soared over the company. She could perform at any moment, discom-fitingly, these acts of levitation. She was staring into one of the portraits.

CHAPTER FOUR.

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 gla.s.s, 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 imminence, 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 sc.r.a.per.

"This time tomorrow," 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 an ocean of s.p.a.ce. 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 someone running and crouching behind a hedge. The jarring echoed down the spines of the listeners. They heard with a sense of complexity.

"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, so slowly along the boundary, making 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 against the hedges. "I wonder now," she added, "who is with the patrol tonight?"

"Someone 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, so that 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 all 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, pa.s.sing 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 and the chairs jostled. They all put them down and apologised. Lois repeated: "I shall walk up the avenue." But having arranged an order of precedence they all pa.s.sed on into the house, creaking and b.u.mping. 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 gla.s.s 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 grown-up people expected it. She had never refused a role. 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 a.s.sure 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, on 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 gone into the house-so flatly, so unregrettingly slamming the gla.s.s doors, she felt that 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, and 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 the 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, with a hand to the thump of her heart: dramatic with terror. She thought of herself as forcing a pa.s.s. 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 the darkness, tearing the leaves. Silence healed, but kept a scar of horror. The shuttered-in drawing-room, the family sealed up in lamplight, secure and bright like flowers in a paper-weight, were desirable sharply, worth coming out to regain. Fear curled back in defeat 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, 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, going to see a ghost. Then steps smooth 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 the black, and there pa.s.sed within reach of her hand, with the rise and fall of a stride, some resolute profile powerful as a thought. In grat.i.tude for its fleshliness she felt prompted to make some contact: not to be known of seemed like a doom of 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 trembling and 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, abstract of several countrysides, or an oblique, frayed island moored at the north but with an air of being detached and drawn out west from the British coast.

Quite still, without even breathing, she let him go past in contemptuous unawareness. His intentness burnt on the dark an almost visible trail; he might have been a murderer, he seemed so inspired. The crowd of trees straining up from the pa.s.sive 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 gone on 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, irrelevant sad look outsides of houses do take on in the dark. Inside, they would all be drawing up closer to one another, tricked by the half-revelation of lamplight. "Compa.s.sed 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 peaceful 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 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.

CHAPTER FIVE.

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 a.s.surance: 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 organising: as Lois's friend she felt this devolvent upon her in Lois's absence: also, she liked organising. "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 even 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 proprietory.

"Aren't they hospitable!" Betty Vermont was not disappointed in Ireland. She had never before been to so many large houses with so small sense of her small-ness. 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 really nice cretonne from Barkers.

"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. 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 daresay 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 today, 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 daresay; 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 clear 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 embarra.s.sing, 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 compet.i.tion too. And they had sentries armed in the avenue and made twenty-four pounds for the hospital. And the priest's niece from Kil-nagowan 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."