The Last September (20 page)

These last remarks were directed with a degree of resentment at Laurence’s back-view, in the front of the car by the chauffeur. His ears, of unfortunate conformation, curled out semi-transparent against the evening light. Laurence said nothing, but thought: he must write that novel, for here lay a gold mine (then Spain and those first editions, a Picasso and curtains for his rooms). He would vindicate modern young people for his aunt and her generation. Only he did not know if he should write about cocktail parties or whimsical undergraduates.

HUGO 
was dumb, his companion inattentive to him in silence. They walked, that Sunday evening, on the turf of the Darra valley, along the edge of the water: he beat with his stick at the gold, strident ragwort. At every flash of the stick she glanced in surprise, but did not say: “Spare them!” Lois, straggling behind, threw in twig after twig to the swollen, hurrying Darra; ran a short way with each in intense excitement, lost it and threw in another. She seemed absorbed but remotely dependent, like one of the dogs. If she had fallen in with a loud enough splash and a cry she might have distracted the couple ahead, but she was sure-footed and not quite certain enough of herself to fall in on purpose.

Recollections of Laura were now wiped for him from the startlingly green valley, leaving the scene dull. Not a turn of the rocks with the river, not a break-down of turf along the brink, not the Norman keep with perishing corners (where they leaned and quarrelled till Laura had wished aloud it would fall on them) gave back to him what they had taken of that eroding companionship. He and she might never have come here; they were disowned. The sharp rocks breaking out from the turf, the impassive speed of the water were naked and had to be seen as themselves, in some relation excluding him; like country seen from the train, without past or future. And, having given proof of her impotence to be even here, Laura shrank and drew in her nimbus, leaving only, as in some rediscovered diary of a forgotten year, a few cryptic records, walks, some appointments kept, letters received and posted.

He now guessed, in fact, he had never loved her. Shocked, but with an enlivening sense of detachment, he turned to Marda—and still had nothing to say. She walked rather too quickly beside him, with long steps. She was leaving tomorrow; she was to be in England indefinitely: she seemed content. And for this, his anger, released from Laura, settled upon her. He loved her, a sense of himself rushed up, filling the valley. The rocks again were transmuted: broken all over in planes of light, a defeated sharpness, they were no more limestone.

“Mrs. Montmorency knows Leslie’s aunt,” said Marda suddenly. “Do you? It seems so extraordinary.”

“If I ever did, I’ve forgotten her.”

“She’s so nice.”

“I have no doubt.”

“Let’s ask Lois to come and talk to us.”

“She seems quite happy. Where do you go—after tomorrow?”

“Oh, Kent. Doesn’t it seem extraordinary?”

Having given the matter rather too marked attention, he pronounced that her sense of the extraordinary seemed to himself extravagant. She agreed there did seem to be some disparity in their outlook. 
“Disparity!” he cried out. “Everything! What a good thing we shall never need to understand each other!”

“I never try to understand anybody,” she said mildly.

“No, indeed,” he replied with sarcasm. “Who is worth it?”

At this she looked back again for Lois. She remembered Francie, seeing them off from the steps in a pink blouse, and the look that fluttered after them down the avenue. No wonder Francie looked like a windflower—her husband had this unfortunate ability to be young at any time. His unordered moods gave him the churlishness of a schoolboy; his silliness embarrassed her. Yet anger did illuminate him becomingly: brighter and harder, for the first time he could be conceived as lovable. Though in this personal atmosphere generated by his temper she was feeling least herself, most nearly negative.

“I should like to go over there,” she said, looking across the water to where trees began on a skyline and — went down steeply, powdered yellow with light on their tops.

“We can’t,” he said, triumphant, “the stepping-stones are covered.” He showed her a line of faint scars, a hesitation across the current.

“I never thought of there being stepping-stones. I only wanted to cross because we couldn’t. Why does one always seem to be on the wrong side?”

“I should have thought
you
never were—don’t you even make rather a point of that?”

She was exasperated past caution. “Mr. Montmorency, what
is
the matter?”

Seeing that he had over-reached himself, been absurd, he raised his eyebrows in courteous mystification (“Matter?”), did not reply but began talking 
about his travels—the greenest river he knew was the Aine, he said; had she ever looked down on the Aine? —an appointment he had held in the North (a deterrent from travel), his five years in London (release from the North), a business enterprise with which he had once been connected. It had never been sound, he now saw, he said, but had once had a chance of success. She took him as he had intended, as the practical man
manqué.
They discussed the question of Canada, whether he would have succeeded. She thought, emphatically, it was a pity he had not tried. “But my wife’s health—” “Oh yes, Mrs. Montmorency… .”

“The fact is, I have not made her happy.”

“She would always be happy a little, she is wonderfully unselfish.”

“Do you mean—”

“Oh, what
is
that? The ghost of a Palace Hotel?”

The mill startled them all, staring light-eyed, ghoul-ishly, round a bend of the valley. Lois had to come hurrying up to explain how it frightened her. In fact she wouldn’t for worlds go into it but liked going as near as she dared. It was a fear she didn’t want to get over, a kind of deliciousness. These dead mills—the country was full of them, never quite stripped and whitened to skeleton’s decency: like corpses at their most horrible. “Another,” Hugo declared, “of our national grievances. English law strangled the—” But Lois insisted on hurrying: she and Marda were now well ahead.

The river darkened and thundered towards the mill-race, light came full on the high fagade of decay. Incredible in its loneliness, roofless, floorless, beams criss-crossing the dank interior daylight, the whole place tottered, fit to crash at a breath. Hinges rustily bled where a door had been wrenched away; up six storeys panes still tattered the daylight. Mounting the tree-crowded, steep slope some roofless cottages nestled under the flank of the mill with sinister pathos. A track going up the hill from the gateless gateway perished among the trees from disuse. Banal enough in life to have closed this valley to the imagination, the dead mill now entered the democracy of ghostliness, equalled broken palaces in futility and sadness; was transfigured by some response of the spirit, showing not the decline of its meanness, simply decline; took on all of a past to which it had given nothing.

Rooks disturbed the trees, disturbed the echoes.
“Don’t
go in!” cried Lois and clutched Marda’s arm convulsively.

“Come on,” said Marda, “I feel demoralised, girlish. Let’s hide from Mr. Montmorency.” Lois shied through the gateway with more than affected nervousness. This was her nightmare: brittle, staring ruins. Mr. Montmorency, disgruntled, still dawdled by the river; the idea of escape appeared irresistible. But the scene seemed strangely set for a Watteau interlude. Inside the mill door, a high surge of nettles; one beam had rotted and come down, there was some debris of the roof.

“If he starts shouting,” Lois said, apprehensive, “he’ll certainly bring the mill down, Oh, I can’t come in, oh, I can’t possibly. Oh, it’s beastly here; I feel sick. I think you are quite mad!”

“I think you’re a shocking little coward.”

“I’m not afraid of anything
reasonable.
But I’m simply nervous; one can’t help that.”

“Come in through that door.”

“But it’s so high.”

Marda put an arm round her waist, and in an ecstasy at this compulsion Lois entered the mill. Fear heightened her gratification; she welcomed its inrush, letting her look climb the scabby and livid walls to the frightful stare of the sky. Cracks ran down; she expected, with detachment, to see them widen, to see the walls peel back from a cleft—like the House of Usher.

“Hate it?” said Marda.

“You’d make me do anything.”

The sun cast in through the windows some wild gold squares distorted by the beams; grasses along the window-sills trembled in light. Marda turned and went picking her way through the nettles; there was a further door, into darkness—somewhere, a roof still held. “Marda, help: here’s a dead crow!” “Tchch!”

“But it’s very dead!” Shuddering exaggeratedly, leaping in a scared way over the nettles, Lois also made for the dark doorway, eager for comment, contempt, consolation. She was a little idiot—appealing, she felt quite certain, to a particular tenderness.

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 gathered about her attitude.

“What?” whispered Lois.

“Ssh—someone’s asleep here.”

“Perhaps they’re dead?” Lois stared past Marda’s shoulder into the darkness, and appalled 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 downwards, arms spread out; a coat rolled into a pillow under his face, which was twisted sideways 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 gently.

“Come away quickly—come—”

But the man rolled over and sat up, still in the calm of sleep. “Stay there,” he said persuasively: a pistol bore out the persuasion. They were embarrassed at 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.

“Don’t be silly,” said Marda. “Go to sleep again. We’re not—”

“Are there any more of yez?”

“One—not interested either. Better let us go now, there will be less talk.”

“We’re just out for a walk,” said Lois, surprised at her own voice.

“Indeed,” said the man. “It is a grand evening for a walk no doubt. Is it from Castle Trent y’are?”

“Danielstown.”

The man looked from one to the other, then ironically between them. His face was metal-blue in the dusk and seemed numbed into immobility. “It is time,” he said, “that yourselves gave up walking. If yez have nothing better to do, yez had better keep within the house while y’have it.”

Marda, a hand on the frame of the doorway, remained unmoved, but Lois could not but agree with him. She felt quite ruled out, there was nothing at all for her here. She had better be going—but where? She thought: “I must marry Gerald.” But meanwhile Marda, holding her arm all the time, had softly, satirically pressed it. They could not but feel framed, rather conscious, as though confronting a camera. The man, who did not cease to regard them with uneasy dislike, asked which way they had come, whom they had met, if they had observed any movement of soldiers about the country. He remained dissatisfied; evidently they had the appearance of liars.

Meanwhile Mr. Montmorency, suspicious of merriment somewhere and determined to humour no one, had sat down to smoke on a parapet. From its base, the bank descended; the river rushed loudly, dark with its own urgency, under his dangling feet. The mill behind affected him like a sense of the future; an unpleasant sensation of being tottered over. Split light, like hands, was dragged past to the mill-race, clawed like hands at the brink and went down in destruction. He looked to the opposite hill, its distinct and peaceful trees. Marda belonged there and might be imagined composedly walking. Knocking some ash off, he leaned forward and groaned at the intervening water— “On the wrong side,”— He missed Francie; there welled up in him one great complaint to Francie. She—selfless woman—would non-committally rustle; some tender fidgeting always relieved her intentness of listening. Distressed for her husband, she would let out little sighs. He would tell her everything … Yet he could not, for Marda was everywhere present, a clear ruddy-white mask of surprise. She impinged on the whole of him, on his most intimate sense of himself, with her cool sombre amusement. Had she a ghost everywhere? —there was something of her in Francie.

“It is like this,” he began to rehearse, “what I need is—”

A shot, making rings in the silence. Ear-drums throbbing, he gathered up the reverberations with incredulity. A battle—a death in the mill? Whose death? He leapt to one thought, a flash of relief in the panic. The front of the mill—he ran round to it— grinned with vacancy: corpse of an idiot. He steadied himself in the door, watched his cigarette drop into the nettles, then stumbled in over the debris. A crow’s flight, stooping wildly among the rafters, dislodged a trickle of plaster. He paused in the well of ruin, terrified for them all. The crow swerved out through the roof.