The Last September Read Online Free PDF

nothing to do but dance and poke old women out of their beds to look for guns. It’s unsettling the people, naturally. The fact is, the Army’s got into the habit of fighting and doesn’t know what else to do with itself, and also the Army isn’t at all what it used to be. I was held up yesterday for I wouldn’t like to say how long, driving over to Ballyhinch, by a thing like a coffee-pot backing in and out of a gate, with a little brute of a fellow bobbing in and out at me from under a lid at the top. I kept my temper, but I couldn’t help telling him I didn’t know what the country was coming to—and just when we’d get the horses accustomed to motors. ‘You’ll do no good,’ I told him, ‘in this unfortunate country by running about in a thing like a coffee-pot.’ And those patrols in lorries run you into a ditch as soon as look at you. They tell me there’s a great deal of socialism now in the British Army.”
    “Well, it’s difficult for them all,” said his wife, pacific, “and they’re doing their best, I think. The ones who come over here seem quite pleasant.”
    “What regiment have you now at Clonmore?”
    “The First Rutlands.”
    “And there are some Field Gunners and Garrison Gunners too,” added Lois. “Most people seem to prefer the Garrison Gunners.”
    “The Garrison Gunners dance better,” said Laurence to Mrs. Montmorency. “It would be the greatest pity if we were to become a republic and all these lovely troops were taken away.”
    “Fool,” said Lois across the flowers. Mr. Montmorency looked at her in surprise.
    Lady Naylor continued: “From all the talk, you might think almost anything was going to happen, but we never listen. I have made it a rule not to talk, either. In fact if you want rumours, we must send you over to Castle Trent. And I’m afraid also the Careys are incorrigible … Oh yes, Hugo, it’s all very well to talk of disintegration; of course there is a great deal of disintegration in England and on the Continent. But one does wonder sometimes whether there’s really much there to disintegrate … I daresay there may have been … And if you talk to the people they’ll tell you the whole thing’s nonsense: and after all what is a country if it isn’t the people? For instance, I had a long conversation this morning with Mrs. Pat Gegan, who came down about the apples—you remember her, Hugo, don’t you, she always asks after you: she was really delighted to hear you were coming back—’It is the way the young ones do be a bit wild,’ she said, and I really agree with her. She said young people were always the same, and wasn’t it the great pity. She is a most interesting woman: she thinks a great deal. But then our people do think. Now have you ever noticed the English? I remember a year ago when I was staying with Anna Partridge in Bedfordshire— She is always so full of doing things in the village, little meetings and so on. Well, I went to one of her meetings, and really—those village women sitting round in hats and so obviously despising her! And not a move on their faces. I said to her afterwards: ‘I do think you’re splendid, Anna, the way you throw yourself into things —but really what you can do with people with so little brain—’ She seemed quite annoyed and said that at least they were loyal. I said they hadn’t got any alternative and if they had an alternative I didn’t suppose they’d see it. She said they had hearts of gold if they didn’t wear them on their sleeves, and I said I thought it was a pity they didn’t—it would have brightened them up a bit. She said that at least one knew where one was with them, and I said I wouldn’t live among people who weren’t human. Then I thought it seemed a shame to unsettle her, if she really likes living in England… . Oh, and I said to Mrs. Gegan this morning: ‘Some of your friends would like us to go, you know,’ and she got so indignant she nearly wept. And the