The Empire Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page A

little more energy about the glories of her youth in London society. Soon she became quite animated and the tea grew cold in the cups of her guests. Ripon, while champagne was being quaffed out of his sister’s slippers, kept catching the Major’s eye and winking as if to say: Here she goes again! But Angela either failed to notice or paid no attention.
    Handsome young rowing Blues in full evening dress plunged into the Isis or the Cam at a word from her. Chandeliers were swung from. Her hand was kissed by distinguished statesmen and steady-eyed explorers and ancient pre-Raphaelite poets and God only knew who else, while Boy O’Neill sucked his moustache and grunted in surprise and alarm at each fresh act of immoderation and his wife took on a primly disbelieving look, rather hard about the mouth, as if to say that not everyone can be taken in by all the nonsense they hear; while Ripon smirked and winked and Dr Ryan appeared to doze, motionless with age. The Major listened with amazement; never would he have suspected that this was the same person (part girl, part old maid) who had written him so many precise and factual letters, filled as they were with an invincible reality as hard as granite. Angela talked on and on excitedly while the Major pondered this new facet of his “fiancée’s” character. At the same time, with the gloom thickening into a mysterious, tropical night, he guiltily wolfed the entire plate of sandwiches. At last it was so dark that the light had to be switched on, which brought everyone back to earth with a bump. The sparkle slowly faded from Angela’s eyes. She looked tired, harassed and ordinary once more.
    â€œAh, things were different before the war. You could buy a good bottle of whiskey for four and sixpence,” Mr O’Neill said. “It was those beastly women that started the rot.”
    â€œThey took advantage of their sex,” his wife agreed. “They blew up a house that Lloyd George was going to move into. They damaged the Coronation Chair. They dug up the greens of many lovely golf-courses and burned people’s letters. Is that a way for a woman to behave? It never pays to give in to such people. If it hadn’t been for the war....”
    â€œ...In which the women of England jolly well pulled their weight in the boat, more than their weight, I take my hat off to them. They deserved the vote. But the British public doesn’t give in to violence. They didn’t then and they won’t now. Take that Derby in which the woman killed herself. The King’s horse was lying fifth and was probably out of the running...but if Craiganour had fallen the anger of England would have been terrible to behold.”
    Abruptly the Major noticed that Viola O’Neill, whose long hair was plaited into childish pigtails, who wore some kind of grey tweed school uniform, and who could scarcely have been more than sixteen years of age (plump and pretty though she was), was nevertheless looking him straight in the eye in a meaningful way. Embarrassed, he dropped his gaze to the empty plate in front of him.
    As for Ripon, he was plainly bored. He had resumed a more orthodox sitting position and, with legs crossed, was tapping experimentally at his knee reflex with a teaspoon. The Major watched him drowsily. Now that he had eaten he was finding it an agony to stay awake and at the same time was pain-fully aware of being hunted by Miss O’Neill’s importunate eyes. Fortunately, just as he was feeling unable to resist for a moment longer some overpoweringly sedative remarks that Boy O’Neill was making about his schooldays, there was a diversion. A large, fierce-looking man in white flannels stepped from behind a luxuriant fern at which the Major had happened to be looking with drugged eyes. He said: “Quick, you chaps! Some unsavoury characters have been spotted lurking in the grounds. Probably Shinners.”
    The tea-drinkers goggled