The Last September Read Online Free PDF Page A

interchange from the high-up faces staring across—now fading each to a wedge of fawn-colour and each looking out from a square of darkness tunnelled into the wall—Sir Richard and Lady Naylor, ‘their nephew, niece and old friends had a thin, over-bright look, seemed in the air of the room unconvincingly painted, startled, transitory. Spaced out accurately round the enormous table—whereon, in what was left of the light, damask birds and roses had an unearthly shimmer—each so enisled and distant that a remark at random, falling short of a neighbour, seemed a cry of appeal—the six, in spite of an emphasis in speech and gesture they unconsciously heightened, dwindled personally. While above, the immutable figures, shedding into the rush of dusk smiles, frowns, every vestige of personality, kept only attitude—an outmoded modishness, a quirk or a flare, hand slipped under a ruffle or spread over the cleft of a bosom-cancelled time, negatived personality and made of the lower cheerfulness, dining and talking, the faintest exterior friction.
    In Laurence’s plate of clear soup six peas floated. Six accurate spoonfuls, each with a pea in it, finished the soup. He glanced right in his aunt’s direction, left in Mrs. Montmorency’s; they were both talking. Mr. Montmorency, listening to Lady Naylor seemed to be looking across at Laurence, but he sat with his back to the light so that Laurence, short-sighted, could not be sure—he preferred uncertainty.
    Lady Naylor spoke of the way things were, with her pointed spoon poised over her plate. She noticed the others were waiting and with a last bright emphatic look in Hugo’s direction bent to finish her soup. He said at once to Laurence: “And what do you think of things?”
    “Things? Over here?”
    “Yes—yes.”
    “Seem to be closing in,” said Laurence, crumbling his bread detachedly. “Rolling up rather.”
    “Ah!” nodded Mr. Montmorency, in significant comprehension.
    “Ssht!” exclaimed Lady Naylor, running out a hand at both of them over the cloth. She frowned, with a glance at the parlourmaid. “Now you mustn’t make Laurence exaggerate! All young men from Oxford exaggerate. All Laurence’s friends exaggerate: I have met them.”
    “If you have noticed it,” said her nephew, “it is probably so.”
    Lois, on his other side, leant eagerly to Mrs. Montmorency. “If you are interested, would you care to come and dig for guns in the plantation? Or if I dig, will you come as a witness? Three of the men on the place here swear there are guns buried in the lower plantation. Michael Keelan swears he was going through there, late, and saw men digging. I asked him, ‘What were they like?’ and he said, ‘The way they would be,’ and I said, why didn’t he ask them what they were doing, and he said, ‘Sure, why would I; didn’t I see them digging, and they with spades?’ So it appears he fled back the way he had come.”
    “—Ah, that’s nonsense now!” Sir Richard exploded. “Michael would see anything: he is known to have seen a ghost. I will not have the men talking, and at all accounts I won’t have them listened to.”
    “All the same,” pursued Lois, “I feel that one ought to dig. If there is nothing there I can confound Michael for the good of his soul, and if there should be guns, Uncle Richard, just think of finding them! And surely we ought to know.”
    “And why would we want to know? You’ll have the place full of soldiers, trampling the young trees. There’s been enough damage in that plantation with the people coming to sightsee: all Michael’s friends.
    Now I won’t have digging at all, do you understand?” said Sir Richard, flushed.
    Francie felt torn in herself, dividedly sympathetic. “I expect one can’t be too careful … The poor young little trees … And besides,” she added to Lois, “one might blow oneself up.”
    “This country,” continued Sir Richard, “is altogether too full of soldiers with