The Place of the Lion Read Online Free PDF Page A

of rain,” Damaris agreed. “Curious. It must be summer thunder, if there is such a thing! But I do hate lying awake at night.”
    â€œNaturally—with all your brain-work,” the other said. “Don’t you find it very tiring?”
    â€œO well, of course it gets rather tedious sometimes,” Damaris agreed. “But it’s interesting too—comparing different ways of saying things and noting the resemblances.”
    â€œLike Shakespeare, I suppose?” Mrs. Rockbotham asked, and for a moment took Damaris by surprise.
    â€œShakespeare?”
    â€œHaven’t they found out where he got all his lines from?” her friend said. “I remember reading an article in Two Camps a few weeks ago which showed that when he wrote, ‘Egypt, you are dying,’ he was borrowing from somebody else who said, ‘England is dying, because sheep are eating men.’ Marlowe or Sir Thomas More.”
    â€œReally?” Damaris asked, with a light laugh. “Of course, Shakespeare’s not my subject. But what did he mean by sheep eating men?”
    â€œIt was something to do with agriculture,” Mrs. Rockbotham answered. “He didn’t mean it literally.”
    â€œO of course not,” Damaris agreed. “But the lamb’s become so symbolical, hasn’t it?”
    â€œHasn’t it?” Mrs. Rockbotham assented, and with such prolonged intellectual conversation they reached The Joinings , as Mr. Berringer’s house was called, with some vague and forgotten reference to the cross-roads near by. The thunder crashed again, as they got out, much nearer this time, and the two ladies hurried into the house.
    While Mrs. Rockbotham talked to the uncertain and uneasy housekeeper, Damaris looked at the assembled group. There were not very many members, and she did not much care for the look of any of them. Miss Wilmot was there, of course; most of the rest were different improvisations either upon her rather agitated futility or Mrs. Rockbotham’s masterful efficiency. Among the sixteen or seventeen women were four men—three of whom Damaris recognized, one as a Town Councillor and director of some engineering works, one as the assistant in the central bookshop of the town, the third as the nephew of one of the managing ladies, a Mrs. Jacquelin. Mrs. Jacquelin was almost county, the sister of a local Vicar lately dead; she called herself Mrs. Roche Jacquelin on the strength of a vague connexion with the Vendean family.
    â€œHowever does this Mr. Berringer interest them all at once?” Damaris thought. “What a curious collection! And I don’t suppose they any of them know anything.” A warm consciousness of her own acquaintance with Abelard and Pythagoras stirred in her mind, as she smiled at the Town Councillor and sat down. He came over to her.
    â€œWell, Miss Tighe,” he said briskly, “so I hear you are to be good enough to talk to us to-night. Very unfortunate, this collapse of Mr. Berringer’s, isn’t it?”
    â€œVery indeed,” Damaris answered. “But I’m afraid I shan’t be very interesting, Mr. Foster. You see I know so little of what Mr. Berringer and you are doing.”
    He looked at her a little sharply. “Probably you’re not very interested,” he said. “But we don’t really do anything, except listen. Mr. Berringer is a very remarkable man, and he generally gives us a short address on the world of principles, as one might call it.”
    â€œPrinciples?” Damaris asked.
    â€œIdeas, energies, realities, whatever you like to call them,” Mr. Foster answered. “The underlying things.”
    â€œOf course,” Damaris said, “I know the Platonic Ideas well enough, but do you mean Mr. Berringer explains Plato?”
    â€œNot so much Plato——” but there Mr. Foster was interrupted by Mrs. Rockbotham, who came up to