The Last September

ABOUT six o’clock the sound of a motor, collected out of the wide country and narrowed under the trees of the avenue, brought the household out in excitement on to the steps. Up among the beeches, a thin iron gate twanged; the car slid out from a net of shadow, down the slope to the house. Behind the flashing windscreen Mr. and Mrs. Montmorency produced—arms waving and a wild escape to the wind of her mauve motor-veil—an agitation of greeting. They were long-promised visitors. They exclaimed, Sir Richard and Lady Naylor exclaimed and signalled: no one spoke yet. It was a moment of happiness, of perfection.

In those days, girls wore crisp white skirts and transparent blouses clotted with white flowers; ribbons, threaded through with a view to appearance, appeared over their shoulders. So that Lois stood at the top of the steps looking cool and fresh; she knew how fresh she must look, like other young girls, and clasping her elbows tightly behind her back, tried hard to conceal her embarrassment. The dogs came pattering out from the hall and stood beside her; above, the vast façade of the house stared coldly over its mounting lawns. She wished she could freeze the moment and keep it always. But as the car approached, as it stopped, she stooped down and patted one of the dogs.

High up a bird shrieked and stumbled down through dark, tearing the leaves. Silence healed, but kept a scar of horror. The shuttered-in drawing-room, the family sealed in lamplight, secure and bright like flowers in a paper-weight—were desirable, worth much of this to regain. Fear curled back from the carpet-border.... Now, on the path: grey patches worse than the dark: they slipped up her dress knee-high. The laurels deserted her groping arm. She had come to the holly, where two paths crossed.

First, she did not hear footsteps coming, and as she began to notice the displaced darkness thought what she dreaded was coming, was there within her—she was indeed clairvoyant, exposed to horror and going to see a ghost. Then steps, hard on the smooth earth; branches slipping against a trench-coat. The trench-coat rustled across the path ahead, to the swing of a steady walker. She stood by the holly immovable, blotted out in her black, and there passed within reach of her hand, with the rise and fall of a stride, a resolute profile, powerful as a thought. In gratitude for its fleshliness, she felt prompted to make some contact: not to be known seemed like a doom: extinction.

He listened, took off his trench-coat, stepped to the drawing-room door. The five tall windows stood open on rain and the sound of leaves, rain stuttered along the sills, the grey of the mirrors shivered. Polished tables were cold little lakes of light. The smell of sandalwood boxes, a kind of glaze on the air from all the chintzes numbed his earthy vitality, he became all ribs and uniform. He was aware of intrusion. But he dared not go in unasked to the library, where Sir Richard might well look up from writing, sharp with pince-nez. He could not again face the hall—he was shy of the glove.

He took up the Spectator, read an article on Unrest and thought of the Empire. Mechanically his hand went up to his tie. He looked ahead to a time when it all should be accurately, finally fenced about and all raked over. Then there should be a fixed leisured glow, and relaxation, as on coming in to tea from an afternoon’s gardening with his mother in autumn. He turned in thought to confident English country, days like the look in a dog’s eyes, rooms small in the scope of firelight, neighbourly lights through trees. He thought of a woman, kind and palpable, who should never produce this ache, this absence.... A door dragged forward its portière; Lois came in from the dining-room, brushing rain from her frieze coat. He stood for a moment in a kind of despair at her agitation, as though he were trying to take her photograph. Then he stepped forward and kissed her, his hands on her wet shoulders.

“—Oh, but look here⁠—” cried Lois.

But she was his lovely woman: kissed. He shone at her, she helpless. She looked out at the hopeless rain.

Then she said deliberately, closing the drawing-book:

“I think you’re cleverer than you can draw, you know.”

“Oh⁠—”

“You don’t mind, do you? Look—have another cigarette. Why can’t you write, or something?”

“That’s so embarrassing. Even things like—like elephants get so personal.”

“I know. I give up reading—I’m sick of their personal elephants.... Or act? But why do you stay here?”

“I can’t think,” said Lois, startled.

“You like to be the pleasant young person?”

“I like to be in a pattern.” She traced a pink frond with her finger. “I like to be related; to have to be what I am. Just to be is so intransitive, so lonely.”

“Then you will like to be a wife and mother.” Marda got off the writing-table and began to change her stockings. “Jacob’s ladder,” she explained. “It’s a good thing we can always be women.”

“I hate women. But I can’t think how to begin to be anything else.”

“Climate.”

“But I would hate to be a man. So much fuss about doing things. Except Laurence—but he is such a hog. Ought I to go to London?”

In the dark of a lean-to, Marda was moving dimly. “Stairs!” she exclaimed with interest. Then she was back in a flash and stood in the door, barring it. She stood intently; menace contracted about her attitude.

“What?” whispered Lois.

“Ssh—some one’s asleep here.”

“Perhaps they’re dead?” She stared past Marda’s shoulder into the darkness, and, desirous, laughed, then clapped the back of a hand to her mouth—unnatural gesture, adequate to the drama. Gradually, she was able to see a man lying face down, arms spread out; a coat rolled into a pillow under his face which twisted sideways a little to let him breathe. One fist, clenched loosely, strayed to a clump of nettles; the knuckles must have been stung quite white. He could not feel the nettles—one had to imagine sleep like that! Behind him, stairs went up into visibility, to a gash of daylight.

Ashamed, the two young women stood elbow to elbow. Marda stepped back, some plaster crackled under her heel.

“What’s that?” said the man softly.

“Come away quickly—come⁠—”

But the man rolled over and sat up, still in the calm of sleep. “Stay there,” he said, almost persuasively: a pistol bore the persuasion out. They were embarrassed by this curious confrontation. Neither of them had seen a pistol at this angle; it was short-looking, scarcely more than a button. The man sat looking at them with calculating intentness, like a monkey, then got up slowly: the pistol maintained its direction.