The Last September (11 page)

“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; space 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 glass blade. Fields gave back light to the sky—the hedges netting them over thinly and penetrably—as though the sheen of grass were but a shadow on water, a breath of colour clouding the face of light. Rivers, profound in brightness, flowed over beds of grass. 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 massed 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 balls. 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 buttoned 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 embarrassing; so curiously bumpy 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 nobody 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 assimilated, 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 glass, 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.

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 embarrassment, 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
appliqués
, dear old cushions with associations 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 noble 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 nobody can be perfect. He never appeared at tea.