The Last September (22 page)

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 passingly 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 passport 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 basement 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.”

“But I don’t want to see her.”

“But she is waiting for you in the hall.”

“I’ve got nothing to say and I’m sick of always having to keep on saying it.”

“I can’t help that, she is your friend. And I thought her feelings seemed very much hurt.”

“She will stay to lunch, you know,” Lois retorted.

“How fickle girls are,” said Lady Naylor, sitting down on the window-sill. Her manner of sitting and waiting most strongly encouraged an exit.

Lady Naylor was more than busy, but could not resist this last opportunity to discover, before the veil of an international marriage descended, what Marda really thought of the English. For nothing of Leslie was Irish except his aunts.

“Of course really,” she said, “you are very adaptable. I daresay we all are, but with some of us it does not have to come into play. I daresay you’ll be very happy indeed. Where did you think of living?”

Leslie had thought of London. Marda confessed an omission on her part.

“Of course that is hardly England,” said Lady Naylor, encouraging. “And of course it will be lovely for you being able to go abroad so easily; you will be so much nearer everything. And you will have no neighbours; one never has, I believe.”

“Demoralising… .”

“You could certainly never be happy living like Anna Partridge. She has an unnaturally sweet disposition: I often pity her … I always found the great thing in England is to have plenty to say, and mercifully they are determined to find one amusing. But if one stops talking, they tell one the most ordinary things—about their husbands, their money affairs, their insides. They don’t seem discouraged by not being asked. And they all seem so intimate with each other; I suppose it comes from living so close together. Of course they are very definite and practical, but it is a pity they talk so much about what they are doing. I can’t think why they think it should matter: supposing I came up here and insisted on telling you what I had been doing the whole morning!”

Marda, feeling how true this must be, pulled open an empty drawer and looked into it, much depressed.

“Though I don’t think it is fair,” pursued Lady Naylor, “to say they have no sense of humour, and of course they are anxious not to appear conventional, and they are kindness itself once they have ‘placed’ one— Marda, surely you are not going to travel in that thin coat? Well, for heaven’s sake do not develop a cold till it can be obvious that you haven’t caught it here. How very unfortunate you have been in your weather! Just that one fine day at Castle Isabel and yesterday evening when you went for your walk. Before you came it was brilliant—such a pity you missed our last party—and as I was saying— Why, Hugo … !”

He did not seem pleased to be with them. He was nonplussed at finding the door open, having prepared to tap on it inexpressively. Francie had insisted on sending him up with some eau-de-Cologne. She expected that Marda, being so modern, would not care for eau-de-Cologne, but wanted to give her some little token for the journey: this was all she could think of. To the idea of this present he offered surprising resistance. Or could she not take up her present herself? Her large eyes of protest reminded him—their plan of life must eliminate stairs for her; already, she had been “up to the top” once. So here he was, prepared to recede three steps when Marda should come to her door: he was of that school.

He stood back from the door, looking past with surprise at the room’s non-committal features—the chairs, the window—as though he were specially struck by there being a room at all in this part of the house, and especially
this
room. Some tree-tops fidgeted under his scrutiny. Where had he been all the morning? his hostess wanted to know; no one could find him. Indeed? They could not have looked far: for he had been in the dining-room, down at the dark end, taking out those old
Illustrated London News,
old bound volumes he remembered since he was a boy. There was that Tsar being bombed by Nihilists: very interesting.

“I can’t think how any of those Tsars had any confidence,” said Lady Naylor gloomily.

He looked doubtfully at the bottle of eau-de-Cologne; Lady Naylor asked at once what he had there, was told, and exclaimed at Francie’s imagination.

“There is nothing like eau-de-Cologne at the end of a crossing, when one is trying to look like something again. Of course, it may not be so bad tonight: at present I don’t like the look of those trees. Our inland weather does sometimes go by contraries; it may be surprisingly calm when one gets to Kingstown. I often wonder if living on an island does not make one more deeply religious—the French, for instance, could never have our sense of dependence—though of course they have railway accidents. But I shouldn’t think about it, Marda; that’s much the best way. I am sure one is often seasick from nervousness.”

“I don’t know what Miss Norton’s friends will think of her hand,” said Hugo. “Their worst suspicions will be confirmed; they will think we have been shooting at her. Her stumble was most unfortunate.”

“I ought to have brought back that piece of slate from the mill.”

“I hold you responsible, Hugo; you should not have let her go climbing about—never mind, it will give them something to talk about over there.”

“You must draw on your imagination,” said Hugo to Marda. “Don’t let them suspect how tame we all are. They will expect you to be a bit of a heroine; you must tell them everything that might have happened.”

Marda, finding a place for the bottle of eau-de-Cologne at the top of her dressing-case, declared: “That would be inexhaustible.”

“They may think it odd that you should have cut the
back
of your hand… .”

The three closed suitcases had a look of finality. Marda wished to go down and find Francie and thank her, they all three crossed the landing at a high pitch of affability. Laurence gripped the hair over his temples in larger handfuls and crouched lower down over his book. His thoughts, tight with concentration, were darkened by a wave of malignance. Marda’s door, which no one had shut, remained flapping and clicking.

In the yard, under the dripping chestnuts, Lois and Livvy walked about in their mackintoshes. This afternoon, Lois intended to wash the dogs; they might anticipate the occasion by disappearance so she thought it better to go down now—they had had their dinners—and shut them up in the stables. They had gone up and looked for no reason into the loft, at the chaff and the dead swallows. They went back slowly, listening in vain for the gong.

“It seems odd,” said Livvy, “she should be going away; she seems to have only just come. I generally get so accustomed to your visitors. I have said goodbye to her once—I had no idea I should be staying to luncheon. However, I don’t suppose she will remember, she seemed rather flurried. Laurence was up there 
with her; it seems odd to me to have a man in one’s bedroom even in the morning, but I daresay she is rather cosmopolitan … It does seem a pity, Lois, you forgot to ask her about that jumper pattern.”

“Do you remember those Black and Tans on the Clonmore road? They always remind me of her.”

“Why?” said Livvy. Then with her holy look, which Lois had up to now managed to keep in abeyance, she added: “That was a memorable day for me, naturally.”

“Why?” said Lois crossly.

“David and I decided to go to Cork.”

“I thought you said that was just chance.”

“It was predestination. Now I must tell you, Lois—”

“Things that have happened just before people seem like part of them.”

“How you do talk… .”

“No, I don’t.”

“Lois,” said Livvy sagaciously, “I hope things are not going wrong between you and Gerald?” Since her engagement, she spoke of all young men by their Christian names and made motherly little impulsive advances in all directions, like Mrs. Vermont.

Hugo wished to return to the
Illustrated London News
but the parlourmaid was laying the table and looked at him in amiable surprise. In the hall the two young girls, hair damp from their excursion, were playing left-hand catch with a tennis ball. So he had to go into the library where his wife and Marda were still talking about eau-de-Cologne—Marda against the mantelpiece, bright and hard-looking in her coat and skirt. Eau-de-Cologne wasn’t scent, Francie summed up; she hated scent for it seemed a kind of advertisement. Sir Richard joined them; they all four talked in an eager, unnatural way, as though they had just met for the first time.

Indeed, the unfamiliarity of the moment made them strange to themselves, though it now seemed to have been waiting ahead of them like a trap into which they had stepped with a degree of naturalness. Sir Richard, the least affected, thought the Montmorencys unduly animated and deplored departures. Visitors took form gradually in his household, coming out of a haze of rumour, and seemed but lightly, pleasantly superimposed on the vital pattern till a departure tore great shreds from the season’s texture. Francie rubbed the palms of her hands lightly on the tapestry of the chair-arms. She knew that life was unkind, and that Marda must have begun at least to suspect this; she wondered how much Marda had understood from the eau-de-Cologne. Marda, turned half away from them, tapped a tune on the edge of the mantelpiece, laughed at every shade of a silence and felt how resolutely Hugo did not look at her now. There was to be no opportunity for what he must not say to be rather painfully not said. Hugo wished there had been a fire; the room was cold with rain and branches went restlessly up and down beyond the windows. Her face and figure, at at which he dared not look, compelled his imagination with ghostly sharpness.

“You will
have a very
wet
drive,
I’m
afraid,” said
Sir Richard finally. To Francie, the remark had
a
faint echo. Had it been what she was going to say, or
had
she once said it?

Outside in the hall, Livvy skidded over the edge of a rug and came down heavily, knocking over a wicker chair. The tennis ball bounced away, Lois shrieked her condolences. They all made a movement of consternation and were delighted.