The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen Read Free Book Online Page B

must certainly come over!”
    “I daresay we should feel strange,” said Norah, and her sister agreed with her. Gerald smiled from one to the other so encouragingly that they told him how a sister of theirs, who was not here today, had once stayed for quite a long time near London and had been taken by an aunt, who was rather what they would call a London Society sort of person, to a very fashionable party—in South Kensington, it had been. But their sister had not cared for the party, she thought the
    English unnatural and said it was extraordinary how their voices sounded when they were all shut up in the one room. “But excuse me,” concluded the elder Miss Hartigan, turning away because she was afraid the talk was becoming personal and scratching her ankle as discreetly as possible, “we should not say this to you.”
    “It was splendid of you to forget I was English. Well, we shall all be leaving you soon, I daresay; all we jolly old army of occupation.”
    “Oh, one wouldn’t like to call you that,” said Miss Hartigan, deprecatingly.
    “—As soon as we’ve lost this jolly old war.”
    “Oh, but one wouldn’t call it a war.”
    “If anyone would, we could clear these beggars out in a week!”
    “We think it would be a great pity to have a war,” said the Hartigans firmly. “There’s been enough unpleasantness already, hasn’t there? … And it would be a shame for you all to go,” added Doreen warmly, but not too warmly because they were all men. In fact, it was all rather embarrassing, they fixed their eyes on the players firmly and wished that the set would finish. They thought how daring it was of Mr. Lesworth to come so far to a party at all, and only hoped he would not be shot on the way home; though they couldn’t help thinking how, if he should be, they would both feel so interesting afterwards. “Poor young fellow,” they thought with particular tenderness because he was so good-looking, and neither of them with this tenderness in their eyes dared to look at him.
    Livvy was walking along the top of the bank with David Armstrong. She smiled, with a small tooth over her lower lip; the tip of her nose quivered downward with feminine sensibility. “It is really a long time since I have seen you, Mr. Armstrong.”
    David was the nicest of all the subalterns; so agreeable. “Why, yes,” he agreed, “I suppose it really must be.” He glanced at the brim of her hat and added: “It has certainly seemed an awful long time to me.”
    “Oh, you mustn’t say that!” cried Livvy; she blushed to the chin and laughed.
    ” I   don’t see why I shouldn’t,” said David, alarmed but gratified.
    “Well, I mean, you oughtn’t to say it like that!”
    “But I can’t help saying what I mean.” His manliness increased with confusion. “I suppose I am that kind of fellow.”
    “You are awful!” Livvy laughed so much from the shock of David’s behaviour that people sitting along the foot of the bank looked up expectantly. She would not share him, she hurried him off at an angle and then continued: “Why were you not at the Mount Isabel Bicycle Gymkhana? I understood you to say that you would be. It was the greatest pity you couldn’t be there, it was a grand gymkhana, and they had a putting competition too. And they had sentries armed in the avenue and made twenty-four pounds for the hospital. And the priest’s niece from Kil-nagowan fell off and cut her lip; she bled too dreadfully but Doreen Hartigan has her V.A.D. certificate. And two hundred people sat down to tea—how was it now that you couldn’t be there?”
    “On duty,” said David, and took on a mystic and obstinate look. “I was up with some of the men and an N.C.O. in those mountains the other side of the Madder.”
    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: