The Last September Part 5

"They are," said Connor gloomily, "but they're very bashful. And they do be stravaiging about always and not contented at all. They are a great distress to herself, and she unable to come out after them."

"But is Mrs. Peter Connor not with you?"

"She is, Miss Lois. But she is desthroyed with it all and disheartened. Indeed, miss, she is in great distress; and she always looking and starting and craning up the boreen. It is torn in herself she is; distracted for Peter and dhreading he'll come. It would dishearten yours to be with her daily and nightly the way she is, the poor woman. And the military from Clonmore have the hearts torn out of us nightly, and we stretched for sleep, chasing and charging about in the lorries they have. Sure you cannot go a step above in the mountains without them ones lepping out from your feet like rabbits. Isn't it the great pity they didn't finish their German war once they had it started?"

"And no news at all of Peter?" Lois asked, diffident.

"We have not," said Michael, expressionless. His face resumed its repose. The sum of detachment and sadness was this special kind of n.o.bility. "And I don't know what is to be the end of it," resumed Michael, with a return to his conversational manner. "I couldn't tell you what will be the outcome at all. These surely are times that would take the heart from you. And thank you, Miss Lois, and you too yourself, your honour."

They once more shook hands, complimented each other again on the beauty of the evening, and Lois drove on. Michael stood at the gate till they turned the corner. The mountain farm, its wind-bitten firs dragged east, its furze-thatched byres, sank slowly under the curve of a hill. Looking longest after them, like an eye, a window glittered. Some geese that had gaped and straggled behind the trap relinquished the chase abruptly, stumbled round in a flock and went straining off in the other direction. Their backs were more than oblivious; they made the trap, the couple in it, an illusion. And indeed Lois and Hugo both felt that their pause, their talk, their pa.s.sing had been less than a shadow.

"That is not," said Hugo after reflection, "the Michael Connor that I remember. He was a foxy man with a chin. Has that one a son Peter?"

"He has. I expect you guessed-he is on the run. 'Proscribed,' don't they call it? He could be shot at sight. He is wanted over an ambush in County Clare, they got him once but he escaped again-I was so glad. I shouldn't wonder if he was up the boreen at the moment. I know he is home, for Clancey saw him three days ago. But don't speak of it-one cannot be too careful. Poor Mrs. Peter must be in a dreadful state, wherever he is. Mrs. Michael is dying you know: she has been dying a long time. The last time I went up they wouldn't let me see her, because of the pain ... There are young men gone from three of the farms up here-Captain Carmichael told me, he is Intelligence Officer. And I know it is true, because Clancey told me too-I say, supposing Gerald had happened to be with us and Peter Connor had come down the boreen, would Gerald have had to have shot him, or would he have been off duty?"

"Peter might have shot Gerald."

"Oh no, not when he was with me. Besides," she added, "Gerald is so matter-of-fact. Nothing could make him into a tragedy."

Hugo debating if she were subtle or very stupid, Lois busy with melodrama, they drove home briskly.

To the south, below them, the demesne trees of Danielstown made a dark formal square like a rug on the green country. In their heart like a dropped pin the grey glazed roof reflecting the sky lightly glinted. Looking down, it seemed to Lois they lived in a forest; s.p.a.ce of lawns blotted out in the pressure and dusk of trees. She wondered they were not smothered; then wondered still more that they were not afraid. Far from here, too, their isolation became apparent. The house seemed to be pressing down low in apprehension, hiding its face, as though it had her vision of where it was. It seemed to huddle its trees close in fright and amazement at the wide light lovely unloving country, the unwilling bosom whereon it was set. From the slope's foot, where Danielstown trees began, the land stretched out in a plain flat as water, basin of the Madder and Darra and their fine wandering tributaries, till the far hills, faint and brittle, straining against the inrush of vaster distance, cut the droop of the sky like a gla.s.s blade. Fields gave back light to the sky-the hedges netting them over thinly and penetrably-as though the sheen of gra.s.s were but a shadow on water, a breath of colour clouding the face of light. Rivers, profound in brightness, flowed over beds of gra.s.s. The cabins lifting their pointed white ends, the pink and yellow farms were but half opaque; cast doubtfully on their fields the shadow of living. Square cattle moved in the fields like saints, with a mindless certainty. Single trees, on a rath, at the turn of a road, drew up light at their roots. Only the ma.s.sed trees-spread like a rug to dull some keenness, break some contact between self and senses perilous to the routine of living-only the trees of the demesne were dark and exhaled darkness. Down among them, dusk would stream up the paths ahead, lie stagnant on lawns, would mount in the dank of garden, heightening the walls, dulling the borders as by a rain of ashes. Dusk would lie where one looked as though it were in one's eyes, as though the fountain of darkness were in one's own perception. Seen from above, the house in its pit of trees seemed a very reservoir of obscurity; from the doors one must come out stained with it. And the kitchen smoke, lying over the vague trees doubtfully, seemed the very fumes of living.

But as they drove down the home-sense quickened; the pony, knowing these hedges, rocketed hopefully in the shafts. The house became a magnet to their dependence. And indeed it was nice, they felt in this evening air, to be driving home, with all they would have to tell of the Mount Isabel party, to all they expected to hear of Sir Richard's day in Cork. Friendly women smiled at them over the half-doors of cabins, and they both felt approached and friendlier driving in at the avenue, under the arch of the trees; he accepting her with philosophy as though she were his daughter, she as comforted in her fancy as though he had wept coming over the mountains and told her his life was empty because she could never be his wife.

She said: "I hope we shan't have to wait for dinner; I couldn't bear it." He said: "Really?" shocked to discover that he also had been thinking of his dinner.

livvy Thompson had ridden over; she sat on the steps with her habit over her knee, waving as they approached. She had sent a message round to the yard when she heard the trap, so that a man immediately came to take the pony. "Listen now-" she began. But Lois only gave her a brush of the hand; she couldn't speak till she had rushed past her into the hall to look for the post, because of a tearing feeling of expectation. There was Viola's square blue temperate envelope on the table. There was nothing more but some gloves Lady Naylor had worn in Cork, some English papers, a box of tennis b.a.l.l.s. She had again that conclusive feeling of disappointment ... "They're back," she said to Hugo.

"Listen now," resumed Livvy, coming in after her. Lois slipped Viola's letter into her pocket and b.u.t.toned the flap over it. For what Viola would think of Livvy she did not like to imagine.

Lvvy was anxious to know if Lois had seen Mr. Lesworth lately and, if so, whether he had happened to mention Mr. Armstrong. Because it did seem strange, she thought, about Mr. Armstrong; she almost feared that he must be ill. When she heard Mr. Lesworth had not appeared either, she was amazed, she said, that Lois was not more worried. It was now too evident something must be the matter. She pointed out, it was her duty and Lois's to find out if they were ill, or indeed if worse hadn't happened, as worse might, to the two young Englishmen in a hostile country. Lois, thumbing Viola's envelope, said she was quite certain they would have heard. Livvy suspected something was hushed up for fear of the English papers: nothing was ever allowed in the English papers that could be mortifying for the English people to read.

"If they should only be ill," she said, "there would be so many little things we could do for them. It does seem in a kind of a way an opportunity. I often think it is only when a man is ill that he understands what a woman means in his life."

Lois said that her own impression of a man who was ill was one of extreme crossness and of an inability to find the nicest woman attractive at all. She pointed out that there was an excellent military hospital at Clonmore, so that they need not imagine David and Gerald tossing feverish and untended. She did not suppose they would be allowed a visit, and confessed that, for her part, she found people lying down while she stood up embarra.s.sing; so curiously b.u.mpy and extremely difficult to talk to.

"But if he seemed at all unlikely to recover," said Livvy, "there would be several things I should like to say to Mr. Armstrong. If he should recover after all, of course he would be gentlemanly enough to forget them, though there would be no harm in their leaving a pleasant impression. To tell you the truth, Lois, I have often wondered if he does not think me a little reserved and cold. Does it ever seem to you that he looks discouraged? You see, he is accustomed to English girls who are very free; I believe there is almost nothing they will not let a man say and that they get kissed before they get engaged. Now I should not like him to think I had no heart at all. You know Irish girls in books are always made out so fascinating and heartless; I should not like him to think that of me. And if he does recover, he might go back to England and get engaged to a girl simply out of his lower nature. I should not like to feel I had spoilt a man's life."

"I expect," said Lois, "it is their week for extra duty." She thought- "If only I weren't so certain there'd be a letter from Gerald tomorrow! If only he'd let me wonder? He is so terribly there . . ." If only his coming or writing could have a touch of the miracle, heal a doubt.

"Will you not stay to dinner?" she said to livvy. "You could borrow one of my frocks."

"I'd like that yellow taffeta, though I should have to reef it in. It's a great inconvenience, Lois, being so slight as I am, though it does seem to be admired. Are you sure your aunt will not mind?-Ah no, thank you, I couldn't; my father'd kill me for riding home after dark. In fact, I should go now-" looking up at the sky- "one never knows, does one? Isn't that too bad?"

"Too bad," agreed Lois, touching her letter. She walked round to the yard with Livvy to get her horse. "But listen," said livvy, mounting, "there's one thing that we had better do. We can drive in to Clonmore, Wednesday, to do some shopping. I really do need wool for a jumper. And if we should meet Mr. Smith or Captain Carmichael, I should just mention, laughingly, we hadn't seen any of them for a long time. And then it might all come out. Or if the worst came to the worst, we could drop in to tea at the Fogartys'; if there was n.o.body else, there'd be bound to be Mrs. Vermont. I don't think she's trustworthy, but if there were anything definite she'd be bound to say-like illness, or an ambush they were not supposed to mention. Or it might all come right and the first we would meet might be Mr. Lesworth or Mr. Armstrong ... I certainly think, Lois, that is what we should do. If you can't get your uncle's trap, I will take my father's."

She rode away. Lois listened until the romantic horse-hoofs had died on the avenue, smothered in trees. This manner of Livvy's of coming and going gave her a setting-picaresque, historical somehow. She would have been much worse if she had ridden away on a bicycle- Then she took Viola's letter out of her pocket and read it out there in the yard. Gnats danced on the underneath gloom of the chestnuts.

Viola did think Lois took feeling rather too earnestly. Lois must not grow less interesting. She admitted the little Gerald might be affecting; he was permitted to happen once. Gerald a.s.similated, she should be more of a woman. Only don't lose detachment, darling; do not lose distance. Viola would be delighted if Lois would give her Trivia. She confessed it did startle her to be reminded that up to now she had been only eighteen by this talk of a nineteenth birthday. She felt, she said, older than the rocks among which she sat-she wrote from a rock-garden. Herbert Evans, a really ridiculous person, sat on a pink tuft of something valuable, apparently painting her. By the way, did Laurence read Pater? Herbert did not-did really anyone nowadays? Did Lois think that Viola might intrigue Laurence? Laurence continued a subject for speculation for three paragraphs. She only referred to Mr. Montmorency indirectly, and at the very end. She warned against introspection. "For introspection, darling, does make us the prey of the nice-middle-aged." She complained there was too much introspection and tennis in Lois's letters. "Don't talk of yourself to that elderly man."

Lois, relieved but chagrined at the omission, wondered if Viola really did read one's letters at all thoroughly. She always noticed the split infinitives-one could not be sure. Lois turned in at the back door and pulled herself up to dress by the back stair banisters. She sniffed-duck for dinner again: it seemed the end of the cycle. This morning she had renewed the roses in Mr. Montmorency's room.

Crossing the anteroom, a spring in some board from her step made an unlatched door swing open. She saw Mr. Montmorency in shirt sleeves brushing his wife's hair. And Francie, facing the gla.s.s, saw Lois reflected, standing still in alarm on the shining floor. They smiled at each other. Mr. Montmorency, thoughtfully and heavily brushing, did not observe the interchange.

Part Two.

The Visit of Miss Morton.

CHAPTER ONE.

LIVVY'S afternoon in Clonmore was such a great success that she forgot the wool for her jumper. At first there had been uneasiness; she let Lois drive while she looked carefully round the Square, went into the Imperial Hotel to see if her father had left a stick and searched both pavements of Cork Street, down which they drove from end to end. In despair, she had just suggested going up to the tennis club to see was there anyone there when the rain came down-it had been threatening all day, the mountains looked moist and close on their drive in. They had to turn in to the Fogartys'. And there, to them anxiously awaiting tea and social developments in Mrs. Fogarty's artistic drawing-room, entered severally all whom they wished to meet: Captain Carmichael, Smith with Mrs. Vermont, finally Mr. Armstrong himself. Mr. Lesworth did not appear (which, as Livvy whispered to her friends, would be a disappointment for Lois): it turned out that he was on extra duty. Mrs. Fogarty had one of the narrow houses looking out on the Square; her windows were screened from outside observation by cubes of evergreen; between the pane and the evergreens rain fell darkly. Mrs. Fogarty's drawing-room was thronged with photographs; all the dear boys who for many years past had been garrisoned at Clonmore, many of whom, alas, had been killed in that dreadful War. You could not stoop to put down a cup on one of the little tables without a twinge of regret and embarra.s.sment, meeting the candid eyes of some dead young man. The room was crowded with cushions that slid from the narrow seats of the chairs and tumbled over the back of the sofa; cushions with pen-painted sprays, with poker-worked kittens; very futurist cushions with bunches of fruit appliques, dear old cushions with a.s.sociations and feathers bursting out at the seams. And there were cushions with Union Jacks that she wouldn't, she said, put away-not if They came at night and stood in her room with pistols. And this was all the more n.o.ble in Mrs. Fogarty in that she was a Catholic, with relations whose politics were not above reproach at all. Mr. Fogarty was a retired solicitor; he had no politics; he became very cross and reproachful when they were discussed at the Club and said he supposed he could not help being a philosopher. But he drank, which shows that n.o.body can be perfect. He never appeared at tea.

As more and more people dropped in and the chairs gave out, the subalterns pulled the cushions on to the floor and sat on them. Mrs. Fogarty was delighted. The room warmed up, there was just enough air left not to make one aware of discomfort in breathing. There was a smell of wallpaper, tea and tea-cakes, polished Sam Brownes, of the Nuit d'Amour on Mrs. Vermont's handkerchief which she pulled out frequently to wipe the honey from her fingers. They all felt very easy and very Irish-the qualities radiated, perhaps, from Mrs. Fogarty, who sat flushed with pleasure and hospitality taking up rather more than half of her own sofa. She wore a brown lace blouse and a tweed skirt, with a green sh.e.l.l rope that swung and clinked on the tea-pot. Indeed it was all very harmonious; she did not know how she would have lived at all without the military at Clonmore.

After tea, cigarettes went round, there was a kick and splutter of patent lighters. Livvy said she would not smoke, she would not indeed; they might laugh but she was an old-fashioned girl. Her continued protests attracted a good deal of attention, till she noticed that old-fashioned girls were after all in the majority. The rector's daughters and Doreen Hartigan all sat looking approving and rather unfinished about the mouth. So she accepted a strong cigarette of Captain Carmichael's, and Smith broke into a howl and said she had sacrificed his ideal of womanhood. Mrs. Fogarty suggested music: they helped her move the bowls and photographs off the grand piano which, undraped and opened, gave out to Mrs. Vermont's fingers some damp chords. It was too bad, declared Mrs. Fogarty, listening doubtfully, that their tuner had died in Cork and she hadn't the heart to look for another since. She said they must have real music, not just the piano. Real talent was present, she added, and looked round compellingly. There was a scuffle from which Mr. Smith was forced up. He stood with his weight on one leg, stroking his hair detachedly, while Mrs. Vermont looked through the music.

Mrs. Vermont remarked, in pa.s.sing, to Captain Carmichael that this was a country where the most extraordinary people died. "Well, I mean," she said, "who would have expected that of a piano-tuner? There was a house where I went for tennis; they had had a parlour-maid there who died. And last week I went for some little cakes to Fitzgerald's and they were all plain ones. I asked for some fancies and they said the woman who did the icing had been taken, G.o.d rest her soul! Really, there's something grizzly about that cake shop."

"In the midst of life we are in death, if you know what I mean," said Captain Carmichael.

Mr. Smith said he didn't mind what he did sing: they all wanted "The Green Eye of the Little Yellow G.o.d." The piece was very tragic and sinister, they all sat wrapt and Livvy did not notice that Mr. Armstrong was pressing her arm till she felt Doreen Hartigan notice. Then she moved away from him, closer to Lois.

There's a brrroken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew And the Yellow G.o.d sits smiling up above.

Lois blushed and let Livvy squeeze her hand. They both wondered "How would feel under the Circ.u.mstances?" The subalterns round all looked dogged, clasping their knees, and thought of what one would do for a woman. There was a stagger of emotional clapping. Then Mrs. Vermont cried they were too ridiculous, the boys were sillies, she couldn't sing at all really, but if she must she would. So she sang "Melisande," which sent every girl there into a trance of self-pity; it was so clearly written about oneself.

With your eyes for fear and your mouth for love And your youth for Pity's grace -All alone, Mel-lisande, all alone.

The subalterns thought it pretty, high cla.s.s but rather dull, and clapped with abandon when it was over. They cast up David Armstrong, blushing and looking very much surprised at himself and all of them.

He blushed till half way through "The Shooting of Dan McGrew," when he became carried away and carried his audience with him.

A woman came between us She was beautiful as Venus, brought a momentary return to consciousness. He looked at the ceiling to avoid seeing Livvy and Lois. The atmosphere strained with cramp, there was a creak of leather as subalterns readjusted their att.i.tudes. Mrs. Fogarty sent round a plate of chocolate biscuits. What a pity it was, she said, that they did not get up some pierrots. When David returned to his place Livvy was rose-pink; she fluttered at him her remarkably long lashes.

"Indeed," declared Mrs. Fogarty, looking from David to Smith (who had no Christian name), "I never heard anything like the two of you. No, not in Dublin in Horse Show week, nor in London nor Liverpool either. You're remarkably gifted. Isn't it a pity they were all so sad? Shall we all have a song now, something rousing you know, that you sang in the Great War."

"Oh, do you know," cried Mrs. Vermont, "I never knew Tipperary was really a place till I came to Ireland?"

"Listen to her!" shouted Mrs. Fogarty, sweeping some more of the cushions on to the floor. They were all delighted. Mrs. Vermont spread her fingers over her face. Under cover of all this excitement Lois rose and said they would have to go. She was sorry, because the party seemed slightly insulted; also, Livvy was so happy. If David should die now, she did not think Livvy would have to reproach herself. Also Captain Carmichael had seemed intrigued; he had spoken mysteriously of the adventures he had in the mountains and of the disguises he sometimes put on. She knew he must feel like the Scarlet Pimpernel and she could not help sympathising. When she rose, he said they must meet again. He and David came out to help them into their trap in the Imperial yard, tucked them up in their rugs, relinquished them disapprovingly to the exposures of the journey and stood looking after them with rain dripping down their bronzed and military noses.

They drove home very much flushed and excited. The rain came down in a curtain and hid the mountains; brown shining puddles were linked along the road. They agreed about almost everyone-especially Mrs. Vermont and the D.I.'s niece-they looked at each other over their mackintosh collars, eyes bright with sympathy, while the strong rain stung their noses, then numbed them. Only when Livvy said, "Melisande was a beautiful poem, wasn't it?" Something stiffened in Lois: she said she thought it was sentimental.

"All that fuss, if you know what I mean, about just somebody."

"Well, love is that, if you come to think," said Livvy, "and myself I think it is very satisfying." There was something so very experienced about the top of her nose that Lois went flat. She felt that she herself must be like a cake for which the flour had been forgotten.

She complained: "I wish we were not being late just this evening. Miss Norton, you know, is arriving and I did so want to look nice. My nose will not have thawed till half through dinner."

"Oh, who is she? Is she pretty? How old is she? Is she engaged?"

"Never met her-though she often seems to have cqme to Danielstown. But I feel she may be a person one wants to look pretty at. She annoys Aunt Myra by being unfortunate in ways that are far more trying for other people than for herself. When she was little she came over to Danielstown to a children's party: she fell down at once on the sc.r.a.per and cut her knee and there was a good deal of fuss and bloodiness. And another time there were people to tea she started an argument about Kimberley, and they all stayed till past eight o'clock in the library taking down the Encyclopedia Britannica while other people who were coming to dinner kept arriving. And another time she lost her engagement ring at a tennis party and they were all very much upset. She wrote afterwards to say it didn't matter because she had broken off her engagement anyhow and the man said he didn't want the ring, he said he wished it were at the bottom of the sea. I always thought people breaking off an engagement went all n.o.ble, but that sounds to me vindictive. Aunt Myra stayed put out ... She is twenty-nine."

"It seems to me odd," said Livvy, "that she shouldn't have brought anything off by this time. But I daresay," she added, "that there has been a disappointment."

At this point they heard a lorry coming. Black and Tans, fortified inwardly against the weather, were shouting and singing and now and then firing shots. The voices, kept low by the rain, the grind of wheels on the rocky road tunnelled along through the close air with a particular horror. To meet in this narrow way would be worse than a dream; before the half-observed lorry appeared Livvy had turned the pony hurriedly up a boreen. They went up some way and waited under a dripping thorn-bush: if Black and Tans saw one hiding they were sarcastic. They heard the lorry grind past the mouth of the boreen with apprehension, feeling exposed and hunted. Lois recalled with surprise that she had cried for a whole afternoon before the War because she was not someone in a historical novel: it had begun, she thought, because they told her to go and practise. The road clear again, they found that they could not turn the trap; they had to back the pony out. "My!" said Livvy, glaring at the horizon. "I wish I were driving a lorry! I should like to crash those fellows head on!"

Just before eight, Livvy dropped Lois at Danielstown gates and drove off, beating her pony into a gallop. Her father would kill her, certainly! Lois raced up the avenue till she had no breath, then had to crawl the rest of the way, recovering. Apprehensive, she strained for the throb of the dinner-gong, a shriek of reproach from a window. But her unpunctuality pa.s.sed unnoticed: Miss Norton herself had only just arrived. The hall was full of suitcases, a fur coat sprawled on a chair, there was a tennis racquet, a bag of golf-clubs.

"Though where the poor female is going to play golf ... !" thought Lois. "A nice coat! ... Good, she has brought the Tatler!"

No one had even gone up to dress, from the library voices exclaimed in excitement; voices complained insistently through the drawing-room door. Lois undid the top b.u.t.tons of her mackintosh and stepped out of it, leaving a damp ring. Absently she wrung the water out of her hat. She listened.

"She is certain she has left it in the train," her aunt was saying, "she says she would swear it was put in with her at Kingsbridge and that she saw it after leaving Darramore. I do not believe myself in travelling with suitcases, one is always counting-I believe in one good trunk."

"Looking at it from the porters' point of view-" said Mrs. Montmorency.

The library door clicked open and Laurence, looking quite enthusiastic, shot into the hall. "She thinks telephoning will do it," he said to Lois. "I cannot make her understand about the Ballyhinch telephone." He disappeared, shouting, into the back part of the house. Evidently there need be no hurry for anything. Lois sat on the hall table to look at the Tatler. Early autumn fashions reminded her-this was an opportunity to try on the fur coat. She hoped for the proper agony, finding a coat she wanted ... Her arms slipped silkily through; her hands appeared, almost tiny, out of the huge cuffs. "Oh, the escape!" she thought, pressing her chin down, fading, dying into the rich heaviness. "Oh, the escape in other people's clothes!" And she paced round the hall with new movements: a dark, rare, rather wistful woman, elusive with jasmine. "No?" she said on an upward note: the voice startled her, experience was behind it. She touched the fur lightly, touched the edge of a cabinet-her finger-tips drummed with a foreign sensitiveness. And the blurred panes, the steaming changing trees, the lonely cave of the hall no longer had her consciousness in a clamp. How she could live! she felt. She would not need anyone, she would be like an orchestra playing all to itself. "Is it mink?" she wondered.

"You look so nice," said Miss Norton, from the door of the library.

Lois went quite blank. "Oh," she replied.

"Where is that unfortunate Lady Naylor?"

"I can't think- Well, she is in the drawing-room."

"Anyhow," said Miss Norton, "I will go up now.

When she sees me looking less arrived she may forget about the suitcase." She looked at Lois earnestly. "I don't lose things except coming here; I am efficient really. But there seems a kind of fatality... ."

"I know."

"Do you?" she said with interest, a keen disconcerting flash- "How odd that you should!"

An approach seemed possible, imminent. Lois, feeling herself smiled at, came out of the coat without embarra.s.sment. Miss Norton, who did not seem surprised by the disappearance of the family, asked to be shown where she was. They went upstairs together; she was on the top floor, opposite Laurence.

"Who was the capable person? Who wouldn't let me telephone-the young man?"

"Laurence."

"Oh, Laurence. And the other people: I couldn't hear their names. They seemed very much here--faintly resentful: I expect I must be horrible for them. He at once accused me of having cut my knee on a sc.r.a.per-when I was three or four. Who did you say?"

"The Montmorencys."

"Oh, Hugo and Francie? Of course I have heard of them. Isn't she his mother-practically?" Miss Norton took off her hat and looked at herself in the gla.s.s dispa.s.sionately and closely. "G.o.d!" she remarked.

"He brushes her hair," said Lois, laughing-in the sharp unshadowy atmosphere produced by Miss Norton it sounded more of a giggle-and swinging with her back against the edge of the door.

"Oh, then it is mutual."

"I knew him best when I was a child."

"Yes, he looks like that. Thank you so much; I think I have got everything. Yes, heaps of hot water.

Wouldn't you like to go now: I mean, won't there be dinner? ... Oh, Lois!"

Lois, from over the threshold came back willingly. "Mm?" she said.

"I mean, you are Lois, aren't you? I've heard so much ... No, don't be late: I should hate you to help me." Miss Norton had taken her coat off and stood in a frilled skirt looking round distastefully at her suitcases. "Go," she said, "do really."

Lois, half way down the gallery, met Laurence coming up. "Mm?" said Laurence.

"I think she seems quite mad," said Lois doubtfully. "You would," replied Laurence, and went past her coldly.

CHAPTER TWO.

ONE did not lightly telephone. There was a telephone six miles away, at Ballyhinch, but its use made excessive demands upon the sympathy and attentions of the postmistress. Marda could not understand-as Sir Richard said, one would think she had come from America. From all their angles she seemed to them very modern. They sat on the steps after breakfast, waiting for post to come, discussing what they should do. There was something agonising to Sir Richard in the thought of that suitcase. Marda said, it would not have mattered at all but that her tennis shoes seemed to be in it. It was quite a relief when the postman settled the matter by saying there had been another raid last night in the Brittas direction and that all the wires were down again. It had been a great raid, the postman said; if the boys had not fled it would have been almost a battle. What times, said Francie, looking at Marda doubtfully, they did live in! But other times, said Marda, other disadvantages! n.o.body hurt, they hoped? Well, said the postman, the Black and Tans had been fired on, but why would they not be and then themselves firing to the left and right continually? It seemed two of them ones had pitched from the lorry the way you would think they'd be killed and the boys had bolted, leaving the two lying.

"How do you know?" said Marda. The postman, looking austerely at her, asked how would one help hearing? Though it was not for him to say what was true and what was what you would hear. Sir Richard agreed with this hastily and with some warmth: he did not want to have the postman discouraged.

Marda received her six letters as a matter of course and glanced them through sceptically. Lois watched her. Putting the letters away, she suggested that since Laurence was so practical he should drive her into Clonmore or Ballydarra to buy tennis shoes. Laurence feared he did not drive the car nicely; he could avoid things but he was inclined to wobble.

Sir Richard had disappeared on his morning round; how much of his corn had been "laid" by the rain last night he did not like to imagine; it was better to know. The rain had ceased before breakfast; loud drops still drummed through the leaves; the trees with their rainy smell were a wall of moisture. Thin vapours trailed on the sky over an intermittent brightness; distances showed up thinly, as though painted. "The end of our weather," said poor Francie.

"But I feel," persisted Marda, "I must have tennis shoes. I don't mind wobbling."

"Laurence is more of the intellectual type," explained Francie.

"I don't think that matters."

"It does with a car," said Lois.

"I have never consciously driven you," said her cousin coldly.