The Last September (21 page)

“Marda!”

“All right,” said Lois. They appeared in a doorway and looked at him gravely and rather suspiciously. Marda put up a hand to her mouth—in an incredible half-glimpse, he thought he saw blood round the lips.

Something released in his voice, he said: “Marda— for God’s sake—”

Lois, as though the mill were falling, went white, then crimson. He had, distantly, some apprehension of an emotional shock. Marda, perplexedly, continued sucking her hand. Then she took Lois’s handkerchief, dabbed at her knuckles, wiped the blood from her lips —where no more came—returned to her knuckles. “I lost some skin,” she said at last resentfully. “Just a pistol went off—you heard?—by accident. I seem to have lost some pieces of skin.”

“Let me go past,” he said violently.

“We
swore
—” began Lois.

“Someone went upstairs backward, not very steadily, not having eaten much for four days. There was some plaster—the pistol went off, naturally. It was silly, really. Look at my beastly hand—I was holding on to the door.”

“Let me get past—”

“But we
swore
, Mr. Montmorency—”

“You
deserve to be shot!” He turned in a manner terrifying to all of them—most of all to himself—on this interruption. “You don’t seem to see, you seem to have no conception—”

“Then why sit there and smoke?” said Lois, trembling. “I saw you—you and your old conceptions.” “Shut up,” said Marda, “oh, do shut up!” “Don’t stand there, let me go past; I’ll—”

“Oh, do let’s talk about something else.”

“We swore,” went on Lois priggishly. “There never was anybody, we never saw anybody,
you
never heard—”

But nobody listened. Vaguely, he waved her silent.“The fact is,” said Marda, “we are neither of us good at explosions. Perhaps if we sat down and thought it over? Perhaps if you went for a walk—
not
up in the trees?”

“No more hide-and-go-seek,” he said, playful with fury. “Still bleeding—?”

“Not like I can—I have rather a high standard. Do you remember the scraper? No, I might have done—
this
—on the broken edge of a slate: it will be the edge of a slate, if you don’t mind. And, being me, it was bound to happen.”

He was set on transgressing the decencies. “Don’t you
realise
, you might have been—”

Marda laughed, coming out through the door of the mill beside him. He looked at her lips—no higher—angrily—burningly. Lois looked quickly away. She thought how the very suggestion of death brought this awful unprivacy.

They took his place on the parapet. Warily, they watched him walk back the way they had come, with effort, as though breasting a current. Lois took up his forgotten matchbox, shook it and put it away in her pocket. Their sex was a stronghold, they had to acknowledge silently; traditionally, one could always retreat on collapse. Mr. Montmorency having taken away with him any element of agitation, they were left with a particular sort of shyness.

“How one talks!” said Marda.

Lois tied up the hand, she said it seemed like Providence that her handkerchief should be clean today. Marda’s was coloured, that would never have done. One had always heard that dye ran into the blood.

“I don’t think it would,” said Marda. “It boils, it is really a good handkerchief … This is the worst of big hands.”

“I suppose they are rather big.”

“Sorry we went in?”

“No.”

“You are being nice to me … One won’t be girlish again—I think, as a matter of fact, we were being goatish.”

“But I’ve had a … a revelation,” said Lois. She bent forward over the river, felt streaks of light fly over her face and felt that speech did not matter when so much was being carried past. “About Mr. Montmorency … he’s being awful about you, isn’t he?”

The statement, almost a query, fluttered up at the end. But Marda’s face was inscrutable with reflections. “About you. I had no idea—I was too damned innocent—” she explained with precision, “till we all stood in there and shouted. Hear him tell me I ought to be shot?”

“He was all—dishevelled. He had to be adequate.”

“Oh, I didn’t mind. But, I mean, aren’t you rather —embarrassed?”

“One can’t help things.”

”It 
was awful. I said, ‘You and your old conceptions.’ They are rather old, aren’t they? … I mean, really: he was in love with my mother.”

“Well, I’m going away, aren’t I?”

“But, I mean, what is the good of this? It doesn’t make anything.”

Marda said, inconsequent— “I hope I shall have some children; I should hate to be barren.”

“Once I really meant to love him, but it would never have done.”

Marda leant against Lois’s shoulder. “You are wonderful!”

“Not so protected as you imagine.”

“Nothing gets past your imagination.”

“I wish,” said Lois thoughtfully, “I had really been shot. But I couldn’t be.” Later she added, “I’m sorry I said that about Mr. Montmorency. What will become of him?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m glad he wasn’t my father.”

“He couldn’t be anything’s father.”

“Where shall you be this time tomorrow?”

“In the train.”

“Funny,” said Lois. “Queer.” Her heart thumped, she looked at her watch. “Half-past six,” she said. “It’s harder, for some reason, to imagine what I’ll be doing or where I shall be.”

“A nice walk with Laurence, a nice cheerful

squabble. If you want something to talk about, talk about me.”

“No, no, I mean … No.” She looked up from the water. “You know,” she said, “all this has quite stopped any excitement for me about the mill. It’s a loss, really. I don’t think I’ll come down this part of the river again … Will you have to tell Leslie? I don’t think you ought to, a swear
is
a swear, isn’t it, even in England.”

Nothing would have induced Marda to confirm Leslie’s opinion that her country was dangerous as well as demoralising. He hated to think of even his aunts at that side of the Channel. She expected, some forty-eight hours ahead, to be walking with him in a clipped and traditional garden, in Kentish light. Under these influences, she would be giving account of herself. Leslie’s attention, his straight grey gaze, were to modify these wandering weeks of her own incalculably, not a value could fail to be affected by him. So much of herself that was fluid must, too, be moulded by his idea of her. Essentials were fixed and localised by her being with him—to become as the bricks and wallpaper of a home.

At present, the mill was behind her, tattered and irrelevantly startling, like a dream of two nights ago. And Lois kept turning upon her a tragic and obstinate gaze: she could sense a persistence of Leslie upon the mental scene. Lois said, but defeatedly: “He is certain to be suspicious.”

“I certainly won’t tell.”

“So it will be a secret?”

“A perfect secret.”

“Thank you so much,” said Lois. As though breaking a spell, she shifted away down the parapet, put her feet to the ground, and was surprised to feel her legs trembling under her. “Here,” she said generously, “comes Mr. Montmorency.”

He came, “with demurest of footfalls.” They smiled and shouted along the bank. Yes, they could come now; yes, they were feeling splendid. “Shan’t we be late for dinner?”

“That is impossible!” shouted Mr. Montmorency, who was coming back to them looking formal and pleasant.

MARDA 
was not due to leave until after lunch, but throughout that morning they were all distressed and sympathetic, could not settle down to anything, walked about the house. Every time Lady Naylor saw Marda she asked her if she ought not to be packing, and while Marda packed, with her door open, Lady Naylor kept looking in to remark how sad it was to see her thus engaged. Francie sat and sewed in the anteroom, looking anxiously up whenever anyone passed. The rain fell, the windows were open, the rooms smelt of window-sills. Francie rolled up her work with a sigh and went up to tell Marda how sorry she was about the rain.

“You’ll have a wet drive,” she said.

“But the hood works,” said Marda, folding together the sleeves of a scarlet dress.

“But rain is so sad when one’s going away. Nothing, I mean, but a train to arrive at.”

“But I really like trains; I am always talked to.”

“Hugo will be so sorry, he has so much enjoyed talking to you.”

“It’s been very nice of him.”

Sir Richard looked up Marda’s train in a May timetable and was worried because he could not find it. Had she really any proof, he came up to inquire, that it had been put on since? Would she not be wiser to catch the 12.30 and have plenty of time for dinner in Dublin? Also, what was he to do about her suitcase if it ever turned up? But he almost feared now it would never turn up. He sighed and went back to the library.

Laurence sat in his room with a book with the door open; he could see across the landing into Marda’s room. Evidently she could not make up her mind which hat to travel in: she tried on three and looked at herself in each. He did not care for her looks or her clothes, really; both were over-assured. But then he could not recall whose looks or whose clothes he did care for. Finally, he went across to say he did not want
South Wind
back, she could keep it to leave in the train, or simply pack it.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, “do write my name in it.”

He recoiled at this awful suggestion.

Her room had all come to pieces—dresses swirled on the bed, hats perched everywhere; she had lost the wedge from the mirror so that it wagged right forward, showing its blank side. She was taking more from the house than herself and her luggage.

“You will have a wet drive.”

“The hood works,” said Marda mechanically, throwing some rolled-up stockings out to make room for some shoes.

“Hasn’t Lois been up?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What can she be doing?”

“Last time I saw her she was bouncing a tennis ball on the dining-room wall between the portraits. She says she has not much to do at present.”

“Anything I can—?”

“Oh, if you’d write my labels—”

“I will indeed, but I hate block printing—need they—?”

“Well, I’m afraid I would rather—”

“Remarkably orange labels,” said Laurence, taking the packet from her politely.

“Here is Livvy Thompson,” he added, looking out of the window. “She must have ridden over to say goodbye.”

“But I don’t know her.”

“She doesn’t know that: you have met.”

Marda leaned out and called her goodbyes to Livvy, who waved and shouted up to her that she would have a very wet drive. Marda withdrew, shutting the window abruptly.

“I am sorry,” said Laurence, “that our young men will not have a chance to say goodbye to you.”

“I’ve only met one of them—Gerald.”

“Oh yes, you weren’t here for our last party. What a very short time you
have
been here … I hope you’ll come back again soon—with your husband?”

“Thank you, it’s very kind of you.”

Laurence bowed and went away with the labels.

When Lois heard Livvy’s voice on the steps she fled to the back of the house and hid in a box-room. Sir Richard had to tell Livvy he did not know where she was, last time he had seen her she had been sorting out some packs of old playing-cards in the drawing-room and seemed very busy. Livvy was much disappointed; however, she took her horse round, then sat in the hall to wait.

Lady Naylor—who had spared her attention to Marda with difficulty: this was a busy morning—was agitated by this development. She stood at the foot of the stairs, calling Lois.

“She doesn’t seem to be anywhere,” Francie at last called helpfully from the anteroom.

“But Livvy Thompson is sitting in the hall.”

“Ask Hugo to find her.”

“I can’t find him either.”

“Perhaps they have both gone out to the garden?”

“Not in all this rain.”

Lady Naylor sighed, gathered up two of the kitchen kittens that were trespassing on the stairs and plunged away through a swing door. It was twenty to twelve: extraordinary how one’s mornings went! Lunch was to be unnaturally early because of Marda’s departure: evidently, Livvy would remain for it. She looked reproachfully into the library. But there Sir Richard was engaged with the herd, discussing the Darramore pig fair.

Meanwhile Lois was very melancholy in the box-room. The window was dark with ivy, she could not see out. The room was too damp for the storage of trunks that were not finished with anyhow; mustiness came from her mother’s old vaulted trunks and from a stack of crushed cardboard boxes. On the whitewash, her mother, to whom also the box-room had been familiar, had written L. N., L. N., and left an insulting drawing of somebody, probably Hugo. She had scrawled with passion; she had never been able to draw. Lois looked and strained after feeling, but felt nothing. Her problem was, not only
how
to get out unseen, but
why,
to what purpose?