The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen Read Free Book Online

mountains, making a short cut through their demesne. Here was something else that she could not share. She could not conceive of her country emotionally: it was a way of living, abstract of several countrysides, or an oblique, frayed island moored at the north but with an air of being detached and drawn out west from the British coast.
    Quite still, without even breathing, she let him go past in contemptuous unawareness. His intentness burnt on the dark an almost visible trail; he might have been a murderer, he seemed so inspired. The crowd of trees straining up from the passive disputed earth, each sucking up and exhaling the country’s essence— swallowed him finally. She thought: “Has he come for the guns?” A man in a trench-coat had gone on without seeing her: that was what it amounted to.
    She ran back to tell, in excitement. Below, the house waited; vast on its west side, with thin yellow lines round the downstairs shutters. It had that excluded, irrelevant sad look outsides of houses do take on in the dark. Inside, they would all be drawing up closer to one another, tricked by the half-revelation of lamplight. “Compassed about,” thought Lois, “by so great a cloud of witnesses,”—chairs standing round dejectedly; upstairs, the confidently waiting beds; mirrors vacant and startling; books read and forgotten, contributing no more to life, dinner-table certain of its regular compulsion; the procession of elephants that throughout peaceful years had not broken file.
    But as Lois went up the steps breathlessly her adventure began to diminish. It held ground for a moment as she saw the rug dropped in the hall by Mrs. Montmorency sprawl like a body across the polish. Then confidence disappeared in a waver of shadow among the furniture. Conceivably she had surprised life at a significant angle in the shrubbery. But it was impossible to speak of this. At a touch from Aunt Myra adventure became literary, to Uncle Richard it suggested an inconvenience; a glance from Mr. Montmorency or Laurence would make her encounter sterile.
    But what seemed most probable was that they would not listen…She lighted her candle and went up to bed—uncivilly, without saying good night to anyone. Her Uncle Richard, she afterwards heard, was obliged to sit up till twelve o’clock. He had not been told she was in, so did not think it right to lock up the house.

CHAPTER FIVE
    GERALD  walked across the lawn to the lower tennis court, swinging his racquet. Once he put up a hand and touched the back of his head, but with assurance: it was perfectly smooth and round. His flannels were gold-white in the sun; he almost shone. He smiled everywhere. It was nonsense for him to pretend he did not care for parties; he went everywhere, he liked to go out every day.
    Everybody was sitting or standing about where the green slatted seats were, at the edge of the shade. No one was playing yet; there were two courts and eighteen players; they were discussing who was to play first, their voices sharp with renunciation. Lois was nowhere; Laurence sat on the ground smoking and taking no part in the argument. Lady Naylor talked eagerly to a number of guests who, holding up parasols very straight in the unusual sunshine and wearing an air of vague happiness, were waiting for play to begin before settling down to conversation. Livvy Thompson was organising: as Lois’s friend she felt this devolvent upon her in Lois’s absence: also, she liked organising. “You and you,” she said shrilly, stabbing the air within an inch of each player’s chest with a sharp forefinger, “and why not you and you?” But before she had even finished arranging the second four, the first would become involved again.
    “Oh, Mr. Lesworth,” cried Lady Naylor, and waited for him to approach, “if you really are coming out, would you bring some more rugs for some more of the people to sit on?”
    He turned and went back to the house. It seemed very odd about Lois—now