The Last September Part 3

Livvy felt in her spine, running down it from under her waistband, a sharp little thrill. She felt all the soldiers' woman, and said in a glow: "Well, I call that too awfully dangerous." He told her: "It's what we are here for." They glanced at each other, they both were embara.s.sed-and showed it-at what they had seen. She stooped, and her hat was an elegant mushroom. From David's complexion blushes cleared slowly away -the last having never quite vanished into his hair before another came after it up from his well-fitting collar.

"I can't think what Lois can be doing." She peered through gaps in the shrubbery towards the gate of the garden. This concern for her friend she put up and twirled like a parasol between them. She sighed: the expansion of her thin little frame, the rise and fall of her two little points of bosom were clearly visible under her white silk jersey. Her panama hat turned down and light tufts of hair came out in fluttering commas against her cheek-bones. From under the brim her eyes looked, slanting slightly up at the corners, with a veiled preoccupied kind of inquisitiveness. She was inquisitive as to so many things her friend Lois hoped one might not have to bother about. David watched her watch the shrubbery for her friend and thought, with a shock, that this really did seem a girl he was to be in love with. He had the fatalism of a recurrent sufferer.

"It will be too bad," continued Livvy, "if she doesn't come soon. You would think she might be picking those raspberries herself. You see, all the people she asked from Clonmore have come and were not expected. If she doesn't come soon I must go-yes, indeed I must, Mr. Armstrong-and see about the two next fours. You see her cousin Laurence is no good for that, he is so intellectual, and Lady Naylor doesn't much notice the tennis so long as the party goes off all right. But it seems too bad she shouldn't see Mr. Lesworth. I expect Mr. Lesworth often speaks to you of her, doesn't he, Mr. Armstrong?"

"Er-I don't remember, really."

"I think it's wonderful to see a man so much in love. I must say I often wonder what love feels like. I always seem to feel so natural about the men I know. But I suppose that's because I am so young-or perhaps I was born platonic. Do you believe in platonics, Mr. Armstrong?"

"Plato? Jolly old Grecian-what?"

"No, but listen-do you?"

"Well, what I think," said David, looking carefully at his racquet and turning it over and over-"of course it is awfully difficult to express, but I think the right kind of girl and the right kind of fellow can be almost anything to each other, if you know what I mean?"

"I think," said Livvy, "you put it rather wonderfully." She suddenly waved her racquet. "Ah-there's Lois!"

Lois came down the shrubbery path from the garden, startled, as if at her own great speed, flushed and visibly breathless. A pink unb.u.t.toned cardigan slipped away at the shoulders; she had her hands in both the pockets to keep it on. Her hat flapped back, it rose above her face in surprise, like a wave. Behind her the bushes stirred in an almost visible backwash. Over the laurels, cropped knee-high at the back of the tennis court, her body rose and dipped with her long steps.

"Ah, here she is!" exclaimed several people, and all looked up the bank uncritically and kindly. The dark air of the shrubbery glittered with midges; she jerked her hands from her pockets and waved her way through. c.h.i.n.ks of sunlight darted up her like mice and hesitated away like b.u.t.terflies. She had been looking down at the party deployed in all its promise with greed and eagerness, as at a box of chocolates; eyes like a thumb and finger hovering to selection. Now, engaged by their look, she became all profile; her step flattened, she would have liked to crawl. She was, as Mr. Montmorency had noticed, very self-conscious.

The Hartigans said to Gerald: "Here comes Lois. Isn't she very sweet looking?" They smiled at each other across him.

He said, "Rather!" pocketing their tribute gratefully, with implicity, as a small boy pockets a tip. His directness baffled them, they were shocked-but he thought how nice they were. In this world, affections were rare and square-four-square-occurring like houses in a landscape, unrelated and positive, though with sometimes a large bright looming-as of the sunned west face of Danielstown over the tennis courts. He did not conceive of love as a nervous interchange but as something absolute, out of the scope of thought, beyond himself, matter for a confident outward rather than anxious inward looking. He had sought and was satisfied with a few-he thought final-repositories for his emotions: his mother, country, dog, school, a friend or two, now-crowningly-Lois. Of these he asked only that they should be quiet and positive, not impinged upon, not breaking boundaries from their generous allotment. His life was a succession of practical adjustments into which the factor of personality did not enter at all. His reserve-to which one was apt to accord a too sensitive reverence-was an affair of convenience rather than protection. Pressed for a statement, he could have said, "I love her," to the Hartigans, Mrs. Carey, anyone there, without uneasiness, without a sense of the word's vibrations or alarm at a loud impact on something hollow. So he looked up the bank at Lois, while the Hartigans watched.

Mr. Montmorency sat on the ground with his knees apart, holding his ankles limply. His grey flannel coat collar was turned up over his white s.h.i.+rt, as though there were a strong wind blowing. He was being talked to by ladies who sat on the green chairs high above him, and when he looked up to answer it was never higher than their knees. He had more than ever his waxen blinking look, as though exposed unnaturally, to the suns.h.i.+ne. His nostrils contracted slightly, as though the smell drawn up from the roots of the gra.s.s in a perpetual hot s.h.i.+mmer were more offensive than he cared to explain. He was to play in the next set, and Laurence looked forward to a melancholy exhibition of departed proficiency. A wiry tenseness and setting of teeth there would be, Laurence antic.i.p.ated, then b.a.l.l.s going straight and cleanly into the net. He would be the "magnificent" player of ten years ago, with little painful grunts as point after point was given away. Laurence guessed that Mr. Montmorency hated parties and conversation as much as he himself did, but being less adept at evasion or honouring less fiercely the virginity of his intelligence, could not escape from talking and being talked to.

Laurence achieved this escape by sitting always with a social alert expression between two groups; when one tried to claim him he could affect to be engaged by the other.

A net had been carefully stretched behind the seats to prevent b.a.l.l.s going through to the shrubbery. But it was full of rents and these the b.a.l.l.s, driven with force from the further back line, discovered unerringly. To cover these deficiencies children up from the lodge were on duty in the shrubbery; they stared and rambled, pus.h.i.+ng among the laurels. They got their teas, an excellent view of the party and a halfpenny for every ball they recovered. Those who did not find any b.a.l.l.s and seemed disappointed were given halfpennies also. So why, as Lady Naylor said, bother? She hated to see her guests go round the net, smearing their nice white flannels.

But now, as three b.a.l.l.s in succession fled through the leaves, she broke off a conversation and cried: This was too much! Would some kind person-she looked at Laurence-go round and help? He rose, reluctant: simultaneously Mr. Montmorency went gratefully round the net at the other end. He was followed by an anxious little boy called Hercules, the only child among the guest and gravely de trop. They all three met in the middle.

Laurence said-beating the bushes vaguely- "Imagine, sir, a small resurrection day, an intimate thingy one, when the woods should give up their tennis b.a.l.l.s and the bundles of hay their needles: the beaches all their engagement rings and the rivers their cigarette cases and some watches. The sea's too general an affair of furniture and large boilers, it could wait with the graves for the big day.-Yes, Hercules, that is a tennis ball but it is pre-war. Put it back in the rabbit hole for the children to find. It is worth a halfpenny to them-Last term I dropped a cigarette case into the Cher, from the bridge at Parson's Pleasure. It was a gold one, left over from an uncle, flat and thin and curved, for a not excessive smoker. It was from the days when they wore opera cloaks and mashed, and killed ladies. It was very period, very virginal; I called it Henry James; I loved it. I want to see it rush up out of the Cher, very pale, with eyeb.a.l.l.s, like in the Tate Gallery. It wants a woman to be interested in a day like that, to organise; perhaps the Virgin Mary? Don't you think, sir?"

Mr. Montmorency, startled at this address, replied: "I have never been to the Tate Gallery."

"Talking of being virginal, do you ever notice this country? Doesn't s.e.x seem irrelevant?"

"There certainly are a great many unmarried women," said Mr. Montmorency, looking doubtfully through the net at the Miss Hartigans.

"It is: 'Ah, why would we?' And indeed why should they? There is no reason why one should not so one never does. It applies to everything. And children seem in every sense of the word to be inconceivable."

"My mother has five," said Hercules, "I am the youngest. Hercules is a family name because I am the only boy, but when I go to school I shall be called Richard after my G.o.dfather as everybody says that Hercules even as an initial would be such a disadvantage to me, though not nearly so bad as being afraid of bats."

"I wonder you aren't at school now," said Mr. Montmorency.

"It would be holidays now anyhow, so I should be bound to be here. That is my eldest sister, playing tennis. They do not see how I can possibly go to school till I have got over being afraid of bats. Besides, I am using up the end of my sisters' governess."

"n.o.body could possibly be sorrier for you than I am, Hercules," said Laurence. "This is an unreal party."

"Well, n.o.body brought you, I suppose," said Hercules.

The strong and dreadful smell of laurels made them all irritable. Hercules tore off the tips of the bland leaves which kept slapping against his forehead. Laurence came with a ball on his racquet to Mr. Montmorency and said: "I am sure this is one that you lost with Uncle Richard and poor John Trent and the man who did not go to Ceylon, in the summer of '06."

"Whereas, I did not go to Canada."

"No, you never did, did you?"

Lady Naylor came and looked at them through the netting. "If between you you cannot find any b.a.l.l.s," she said, "Laurence, you had better please fetch that other box from the back hall. They are beginning a new set with only three."

"I have two here that seem quite clean, but they haven't much bounce," said Hercules.

"Oh, that is splendid, you are a good little boy!" She took the b.a.l.l.s from him through a hole. "Here are a nice lot to go on with," she called out hopefully, rolling them to the court. Mr. Montmorency and Laurence went on searching.

"Now take Aunt Myra: what does she think she's doing?"

"It it comes to that," said Mr. Montmorency, nettled, "what do you think you're doing? Why are you here at all if you don't like it-as Hercules said? I was happy here at your age, I was full of the place, I asked nothing better. I ask nothing better now."

"Oh," said Laurence.

"However, I have no doubt you are right in being dissatisfied; I daresay it is progress," said Mr. Montmorency angrily. "I daresay it is good for the race."

Laurence, who did not consider that he had anything to do with the race, replied with some indignation: "I have no money; where do you expect me to get any money from? I was to have gone to Spain this month with a man and last year I should have gone to Italy with another man, but what do you expect me to go on? I have to eat somewhere, don't I, and here it is simply a matter of family feeling."

"This is one of the b.a.l.l.s, I shall throw it over ... I had no idea that you were such a materialist."

"I can't help my stomach. Besides I like eating, it is so real. But I should like something else to happen, some crude intrusion of the actual. I feel all ga.s.sy inside from yawning. I should like to be here when this house burns."

"Quite impossible; quite unthinkable. Why don't you fish or something?... Nonsense!" he added, looking warningly at the house.

"Of course, it will, though. And we shall all be so careful not to notice."

"Are you the undergraduate of today?"

"I wish I were. I should love to be quite abstract."

Mr. Montmorency, offended by all this clever conversation, felt more than ever his isolation, his homelessness. Life was to him an affair of discomfort, but that discomfort should be made articulate seemed to him shocking. The over-fine machinery of his mind ceaselessly strained and caught and was agonisingly jerked over details. His refuge was manly talk; he suspected Laurence. He said: "You are fortunate. There was never a time when I had not other people to think about."

Laurence, who immediately thought this womanish, said: "Oh yes, love." He flicked out and studied the word indifferently-coin of uncertain value.

"Not entirely. One had a certain debt... ."

"Oh, yes. Yes."

Laurence became more formal, very much better mannered. He recalled that the man was married, had given away his integrity, had not even a bed to himself. The husband, glancing a last time through and under the bushes, was negligible, diffused even a certain staleness. Laurence sheered away mentally, moved further off through the shrubbery. He had been talking foolishly, in his vein of the third or fourth quality, and regretted now having talked at all. He felt there had been something morbid about his intrusion, as in a visit to a prison.

"I was to have played in that second set," said Mr. Montmorency. "It seems to be nearly over: perhaps I shall play in the third."

"Tea will be coming, never forget tea." Indeed a move was being made to the house already. Tea was too grave an affair to be carried out, besides, one wasn't accustomed to stability in the weather.

"Oh, Hugo, come out now, dear," cried Francie, walking past with Mrs. Hartigan. "I am sure it doesn't matter about the b.a.l.l.s. And the Trents have come- don't you see them? We are just going back to the house to meet them now."

"Archie? Splendid!" He burst from the shrubbery at the other side, gained the path and hurried towards the house. At a turn of the path, in an arch cut under some holly, he saw Gerald and Lois standing, talking, looking down earnestly at their racquets. With her head bent, Lois was like her mother. He stared, then pa.s.sed them quickly.

But Lois did not notice him going by. She was saying: "I feel certain you have illusions about me, I don't believe you know what I'm like a bit." And while she spoke she counted the crimson strings in her racquet: three down, six across.

CHAPTER SIX.

MRS. VERMONT ate more hot cakes than she cared to remember because they were so good and n.o.body seemed to notice. She went on to chocolate cake, then to orange layer cake, to which she returned again and again. An idea she had had that one should not eat very much when invited out languished; she finished up with a plate of raspberries. She put all thought of her figure resolutely behind her. Mother, of course, had filled out terribly, but oneself mightn't.

"Nummy-nummy," she said, pointing out the raspberries to David Armstrong who sat beside her. "David have some!"

Livvy Thompson, sitting beyond David, deplored these women who talked baby talk. She felt that her own appeal to men was more serious. "Mr. Armstrong has got to play in the next set," she said warningly.

"Hoity-toity!" thought Betty Vermont (she never used the expression aloud as she was not certain how one p.r.o.nounced it: it was one of her inner luxuries). Turning to Mrs. Carey (the Honourable Mrs. Carey) who sat on her other side, she said frankly: "Your scrumptious Irish teas make a perfect piggy-wig of me. And dining-room tea, of course, makes me a kiddy again."

"Does it really?" said Mrs. Carey, and helped herself to another slice of chocolate cake. She thought of Mrs. Vermont as "a little person" and feared she detected in her a tendency, common to most English people, to talk about her inside. She often wondered if the War had not made everybody from England a little commoner. She added pleasantly: "This chocolate cake is a speciality of Danielstown's: I believe it's a charm that they make it by, not a receipt."

"Things do run in families, don't they? Now I am sure you've all got ghosts."

"I can't think of any," said Mrs. Carey, accepting another cup of tea. She smiled and nodded across the table to Mrs. Archie Trent who had just come in. "We have been much more worried lately by people taking away our car. Of course it is always brought back again, but one doesn't like to think of its being used for nefarious purposes. That is the worst of a Ford."

Mrs. Vermont opened her mouth to tell Mrs. Carey the latest Ford story, then checked herself because in Ireland they seemed to like Fords so seriously. She observed instead: "All this is terrible for you all, isn't it? I do think you're so sporting the way you just stay where you are and keep going on. Who would ever have thought of the Irish turning out so disloyal-I mean, of course, the lower cla.s.ses! I remember Mother saying in 1916-you know, when that dreadful rebellion broke out-she said: "This has been a shock to me; I never shall feel the same about the Irish again!" You see, she had brought us all up as kiddies to be so keen on the Irish and Irish songs. I still have a little bog oak pig she brought me back from an exhibition. She always said they were the most humorous people in the world, and with hearts of gold. Though of course we had none of us ever been in Ireland."

"Well, I hope you are pleased with us now you have come," said Mrs. Carey hospitably. "I expect you have all been enjoying this lovely weather?"

"Oh well-you see we didn't come over to enjoy ourselves, did we? We came to take care of all of you- and of course, we are ever so glad to be able to do it. Not that I don't like the country; it's so picturesque with those darling mountains and the hens running in and out of the cottages just the way Mother always said. But you see one can't help worrying all the time about Timmie-my husband-and all the boys; out all night sometimes with the patrols or else off in the mountains."

"Terrible. And do you find this a tiring climate?"

A word attracted Mrs. Trent's attention across the table. "Terrible what?" she said. "Terrible who?" She was youngish, brusque and dominant; the high pink colour over her face as from riding hard in a wind gave her a look of zestfulness alarming to Mrs. Vermont. "I shouldn't worry," she said to Mrs. Vermont.

Mrs. Vermont replied with a shade of asperity that it was they who were in a position to worry and therefore must not. "'Cause we're here to take care of you!" The remark, caught in a momentary silence around the table, was received with civility, interest and attention. "That's splendid!" said Mrs. Trent heartily. She got up, having finished her tea rapidly, and went to smoke outside. Her husband was M.F.H. and really, thought Mrs. Vermont, they did not seem to worry about anything but wire. Mrs. Vermont turned for support to David: his ears were scarlet, he rapidly stirred his tea.

Five days ago, an R.I.C. barracks at Ballyrum had been attacked and burnt out after a long defense. Two of the defenders were burnt inside it, the others shot coming out. The wires were cut, the roads blocked; there had been no one to send for help so there was no help for them. It was this they had all been discussing, at tea, between tennis: "the horrible thing." No one could quite understand why Captain Vermont and the subalterns did not seem more appalled and interested. It was not apparent how the subject rasped on their sensibilities. These things happened, were deplored and accepted, and still no one seemed to look on David or Gerald, Smith, Carmichael or Mrs. Vermont's Timmie as a possible remedy. Here they all were, playing tennis, and everyone seemed delighted. "If they'd just let us out for a week-" felt the young men. David could not look up as he stirred his tea. What was the good of them? This they felt everyone should be wondering. But the party would indeed have been dull without them, there would have been no young men. n.o.body wished them elsewhere.

Lois had been worrying chiefly because Gerald had illusions about her, also, as to whether Aunt Myra noticed the raspberries still would not go round. The guests for which she was responsible were not only unexpected but ravenous. And while she sat watching Aunt Myra, Gerald sat watching herself as though she were an entirely different person, not the sort of person one could describe at all. After tea she played on the upper court with Captain Vermont, against Gerald and Nona Carey. She played well, all her strokes came off; it seemed that worry agreed with her. It could not agree with Gerald, who played badly. Then it occurred to her: he was not worried; she had not the power to worry him. Some idea he had formed of herself remained inaccessible to her; she could not affect it.

By now the upper court was in shadow, they all flickered against the dark screen of the trees like figures cut out of light green velvet. Below, where hot bands of light still blinded the players, there was a suggestion of strain and violence. Whenever she looked down, Mr. Montmorency seemed to be handing b.a.l.l.s to his partner in silent anger. She guessed it must be himself who was playing badly so that while she could not resist looking down, she had to keep looking away from him just as fast.

"You were splendid," said Captain Vermont when their set finished.

"Oh no, I wasn't," said Lois by reflex action, and wished all the other things to which she was always replying, "Oh no, I didn't," or "Oh no, I'm not," were half as true. And she thought what a pity it was that Mr. Montmorency, instead of exerting himself so fruitlessly, had not been sitting there at the edge of the court to watch her.

She walked down the slope from the court with Gerald beside her. Conscious of many people's attention she did not know if she seemed enviable or foolish. "I wish you wouldn't keep looking so pleased the whole time," she said to Gerald.

"Oh ... but I am."

"What at?"

"Well, I love coming over here. I think you have such awfully nice parties."

"Oh, the party ... But David enjoys them, and he hasn't got the same expression as you have. In fact, he looks rather sick. What can be the matter?"

"Well, we all feel a little rotten about that barrack."

"Don't. Do you know that while that was going on, eight miles off, I was cutting a dress out, a voile that I didn't even need, and playing the gramophone? ... How is it that in this country that ought to be full of such violent realness there seems nothing for me but clothes and what people say? I might as well be in some kind of coc.o.o.n."

"But what could you have done? You, you-"

"I might at least have felt something!"

"But you do, you've got the most wonderful power of feeling."

"But you never take in a word I say. You're not interested when I tell you about myself."

"You know I could listen all day to you talking."

She thought: "As though you could make me talk all day!" To cover the thought she said earnestly: "You think we don't all understand your not being there in time and not doing anything afterwards? We're not all such idiots. We know it's most terribly difficult for you and that you must obey orders. It's bad luck the orders are silly. It's all this dreadful idea about self-control. When we do nothing it is out of politeness, but England is so moral, so dreadfully keen on not losing her temper, or being for half a moment not a great deal more n.o.ble than anyone else. Can you wonder this country gets irritated? It's as bad for it as being a woman. I never can see why women shouldn't be hit, or should be saved from wrecks when everybody is complaining they're so superfluous."

"You don't understand: it would be ghastly if those things went."

"Why? I don't see-and I am a woman."

Which was, of course, exactly why it wasn't to be expected or desired she should understand. He smiled, too happy to answer, and tore out a handful of leaves from the privet hedge. She had this one limitation, his darling Lois; she couldn't look on her own eyes, had no idea what she was, resented almost his attention being so constantly fixed on something she wasn't aware of. A fellow did not expect to be to a girl what a girl was to a fellow-this wasn't modesty, specially, it was an affair of function-so that the girl must be excused for a possible failure in harmony, a sometimes discordant irreverence. When he said: "You will never know what you mean to me," he made plain his belief in her perfectness as a woman. She wasn't made to know, she was not fit for it. She was his integrity, of which he might speak to strangers but of which to her he would never speak.

He tore out another handful of leaves from the hedges and scattered them carefully on the gra.s.s. They both laughed.

She was thinking: "When next I write to Viola, can I describe him?" Viola flashed off her men in a phrase, with a sweep of her red quill pen. The red pen had leaned from the Chinese inkpot, against the window, like a thin flame, a leaning flamingo on that day's sunny mist in the Westminster street. It remained a picture of their intercourse. They had said goodbye in December, a slight day, anxious between the enormous past and future. The parting was hardly real, they had barely kissed. They were impatient, nervous, waiting for the curtain to rise. They had just left school.

They had left school the day before. Yet the new life had been impatient for Viola, drawing her away from Lois in the taxi, appropriating her with certainty. She had stepped from their taxi toppling with school trunks with a kind of solemnity, as on to a carpet stretched for her festal approach from the kerb to the doors of her home. Next day, when they said goodbye, her hair was in place already, woven into her personality. Her pigtail had been the one loose end there was of her, an extension of her that had independence, a puppyish walloping thing with nerves of its own. Now the hair was woven in bright sleek circles over her ears, each strand round like an eel's body. The effect completed her; Lois knew she had been missing or else discounting something all these years. Viola must have played at being a schoolgirl just as Lois would have to play at being a woman. Two expensive young men's photographs had risen like suns on her mantelpiece; these young men had loved since last Easter holidays; their position was now regularised magically by the putting up of Viola's hair. For only little commonalities, she declared, had affairs while still at school. And Lois, after that goodbye so distinct and distant, as at the little end of a telescope, had left her with the composed and knowing photographs and the red pen leaning against the suns.h.i.+ne. She had wondered, going out to a day of shopping and the night mail to be caught at Euston, whether life was to hold for her, too, a man's pa.s.sion; and if so, when. And she had bought a dozen pairs of silk stockings and the black georgette Aunt Myra said was "old."

But a man's pa.s.sion was not at all the thing. My dear, too Dell-is.h.!.+ Viola went to what she supposed one would call her first ball; in tulle she went, smoke blue, with a close gold leaf round the hair-not bright gold, dull gold. Various people had seemed intrigued, were in fact intrigued rather definitely. There was So-and-so, an absurd person (flash of the red pen), and the aloof, rather masklike So-and-so-who might intrigue Lois. But when it came to So-and-so (a most brilliant flash of the pen) Viola would admit to Lois she was affected. It really had been affecting. But enough of Viola. "Now, Lois darling, you must tell me about them all: I must know everybody."

And there arose, recurrently, the difficulty in describing Gerald. Who else had been intrigued, Lois was not certain. How much was somebody intrigued when they wished to sit out in a car in the barrack square for four dances? Might not Viola consider sitting out in a car at all rather Dell-ish? When someone tried to kiss you with whiskyish breath, how much were they intrigued and how much was whisky? She thought a major proposed to her, though he seemed rather old, but he was so much confused and had such a mumbly moustache, she could not be certain. And later on at the Clonmore Club, a lady was pointed out to her as, she was almost certain, that major's wife. David had seemed intrigued, but then he himself intrigued Livvy so very definitely and did not a young man under these conditions become slightly sordid? So Lois became so very general in her references that Viola was suspicious; she asked: was there really anyone? And began to write in a married-womanish tone of encouragement, which considering she could have been married at any moment was really justified. Lois was forced to state there was a man in the Rutlands, a Gerald Lesworth, whom she found affecting. She supposed there was no question as to his being intrigued; people seemed to notice. So Viola wrote back, she must hear all about him, should have heard before: her Lol was really the final Sphinx. She wanted to know, to see, to hear him, even to smell him-because all the nicest men did smell, didn't they, indefinitely but divinely. One noticed it when one was dancing or, sometimes, sitting out. So now, please, everything: by return.

Viola did not like moustaches, but some men did qualify their moustaches, surely? Gerald's lay like a fine dark shadow, so that his lip seemed to curl up more than it did. It answered his eyebrows somehow- that had a way of drawing together while he spoke- and some soft edgeless darkness about his eyes. If one mentioned his teeth so white that his smile seemed a long slow flash in the tanned face, didn't it make him sound like Fairbanks? For he was not, at all. He had a way of looking down while he spoke as though his thoughts were under his eyelids. From his look she had sometimes turned in impatience, never in discomfort. There was emotion there unclothed in the demi-decency of thought; nakedness, not a suggestive deshabille. If he was looking away and one spoke, his: eyes returned with an extraordinary look of welcome. He had a good chin, cut sharply away underneath with a strong shadow. His head was pleasant with b.u.mps, that made planes of light and shadow over his polished hair. And she knew she liked something about the back of his neck: it was a personal neck-not just a connection, an isthmus-with skin fitting closely over the muscles.

As she stood looking at Gerald by the privet hedge, he emerged from the mist of familiarity clear to her mental eye. She saw him as though for the first time, with a quick response to his beauty; she saw him as though he were dead, as though she had lost him, with the pang of an evocation. While she could hold him thus-before he receded or came too closely forward- she wanted to run indoors and write to Viola. Viola would be certain to tell her she loved him, and by that declaration, to be expressed with vigour, Lois was too certain to be affected. She was afraid at the thought of it.

She would have loved to love him; she felt some kind of wistfulness, some deprivation. If there could only be some change, some movement-in her, outside of her, somewhere between them-some incalculable s.h.i.+fting of perspectives that would bring him wholly into focus, mind and spirit, as he had been bodily in focus now-she could love him. Something must be trans.m.u.ted ... Or else, possibly, if he would not love her so, give her air to grow in, not stifle her imagination.