conscious and exotic, against a grove of pollarded chestnuts. On the nearer side of this lawn, which was mown and tended, unlike the wilderness through which they had just passed, there were a few rows of shiny modem grave- stones, and here and there a long mound of earth covered with withered flowers. Penn realized with a tremor that he was now in the presence of the dead, the real dead, not those who had died long ago. He could not think of those great crumbling tombs, riding upon the undulating grasses, as having ever covered a person who was wept for. But here there were the marks of real bereavement. People one might have known were asleep here.
People one might have known. He guessed where he was going just the moment before, as Miranda halted by it, he read upon a newly cut tomb-stone the name of Steven Peronett.
'Oh, said Penn, speaking out of an immediate shock and a sort of shame, 'I didn't know he was here. .
'He's not here, said Miranda.
Penn took a moment to understand her and then was silent. He felt ashamed at not having known where his cousin was buried and ashamed of having followed Miranda without knowing whether she wanted his company; and he felt a vast distress and incoherent pity at standing beside Steve's grave. He looked at the shining ugly surface of the stone. It was odd how stone that one saw nowhere else seemed to appear in cemeteries, as if it were indeed the portal of another world. Steven Peronett. Beloved son of Ann and Randall Peronett. Aged fourteen years. He was older than Steve now. It was a strange thought.
He said to Miranda. 'I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were coming here. I'll go away at once.
But she said, 'No, don't go. Stay and see the birds.
'The birds? He turned to see that she had opened her bag and brought out another paper bag which was inside it. The paper bag was full of fragments of bread.
In front of the stone the grass was flat, mown over, and nothing marked the extent of the grave. Miranda began to strew the bread in a neat rectangle, of which she first marked out the sides with a trail of pieces, till she had covered with the white fragments an area upon which a boy might have lain down. Then she drew back a little across the grass.
Penn followed her in amazement at the strange rite. 'What is this?
'Steve loved birds, said Miranda. 'He always used to feed them at Grayhallock. He would ring a bell every morning and the birds would come. And when he was dying he said to me, «Don't bring flowers to my grave. But come sometimes and feed the birds there. I'd like to think that you might do that.
'Ah, gee — said Penn. A confusion of emotions overwhelmed him.
He felt a sudden grief which was like a kind of joy and for a moment he felt as though he might burst into tears.
Miranda sat down on a long recumbent tomb of plum-coloured marble a little bit away from the grave and Penn sat down beside her. He turned to look at her. An extraordinary dignity and solemnity had come to her from the performance of the rite. Her pale transparent slightly freckled face was serene under the jagged cap of red hair. She was serious, yet a strange smile was diffused upon her features, a light shining from within. She gazed away from him in the direction of the offering of bread, and saw that she was beautiful. Then looking down he saw her knees.
She was wearing green stockings which were pulled up to just above the calf, and her short tartan skirt lay neatly across her legs, just above the knee. Her knees were revealed, bare, white and rounded, between the two garments. Penn stared at them and some stretched cord seemed to twang far away, something gave and broke. He had never thought that he could find a girl's knees exciting. But then Miranda was not a girl. Yet she was not a little girl either. What was she then? And what was happening to him? He stared down and felt quite clearly the urge t. o kneel before her and put his head upon her knees. The distant cuckoo cried out, hesitant, melancholy and hollow. He breathed deeply and raised his gaze. The birds were beginning to come for the bread.
Chapter Ten
'HUMPHREY is so disappointed, said Mildred. 'It seems that young Penn has changed his mind and doesn't want to come to London after all. Do you think Ann is bothered? There's no need to be. Do you think I should speak to her?
She was drinking sherry with Hugh at his flat in Brompton Square.
It was raining a little and the great dome of Brompton Oratory could be seen standing out against a grey sky which intermittent sunshine made to glow with an unnerving radiance which brought the building into relief, making it suddenly delicate and Florentine, like something in an Italian coloured print. The room within was chilly and darkish, a momentary winter room in summer. The light had been turned on above the Tintoretto.
Since her remarks to Humphrey on the subject of Hugh, Mildred's imagination had been active. She was indeed surprised and almost planned at the intensity of its activity. It was true that she had for years' adored' Hugh, and that if she had not had a gentle contempt for Fanny she would have been 'the tiniest bit jealous'. It was true that she had never forgotten the occasion of the kiss, and that she had, for a considerable time after that, suffered. She had certainly been ferociously jealous of Emma. She had often, somewhat vaguely, put it to herself that she 'wanted' Hugh, and had eventually taken it for granted that this was so. She coveted Hugh. And when it was known that poor Fanny was dying she had again vaguely, and a little guiltily, expected that, somehow or other, she would now 'inherit' Hugh.
But since she had, with a gay casualness which was not at the time quite misleading, summed up these ideas for the benefit of her husband, she had been startled by the growth of a much more positive need. It was as if saying these things had in itself set something off. She had, through the years, grown used to imperfect sympathies. Her intimacy with Humphrey lacked warmth, her intimacy with Felix, owing to his peculiar muteness, lacked detail. Her daughter, whom she secretly admired, was now almost a stranger. She had for long had, she reflected, no one to whom she could open her heart. And with surprise, fear and joy she noted now the extent to which, after all, she still had a heart. She, the clever, capable, sardonic Mildred Finch, the elderly philosophical Mildred, so very much the mistress of herself, the captain of her very private soul, was shaken. It was, she thought, almost as if she were falling in love. And then she thought, but I am falling in love!
When she had thus put it she felt so pleased with herself that it almost put her anxieties at rest. She had said to Humphrey that she wanted the impossible, to have her youth back. Yet in a sense these feelings were the very stuff of youth and their occurrence again, after so many years of quietness, seemed a sort of miracle. That she would, so inspired, be able, as she had put it to Humphrey, to 'bring Hugh up to it', she had little doubt, though she was cheerfully vague about what 'it' was towards which Hugh was so shortly to be elevated. For the present her own state of mental activity so much gratified her that she felt that if Hugh would only acquiesce she had love enough for both. All the same, she waited with increasing nervousness for his promised summons, and when it came; and when she stood at last outside his door, she found herself trembling like a young girl.
As she looked round Hugh's drawing-room, which she had not visited now for some time, she reflected how delicious it was to have him a bachelor once again. She had been used to come to these rooms to take tea with Fanny, sometimes glimpsing Hugh just as she was leaving. Now she was sitting behind closed doors with him and him alone, as the evening drew on, and hoping like a seventeen-year-old that perhaps he might invite her out to dinner. She laughed inwardly at these thoughts, with a laugh of exhilaration and triumph, and then guiltily, but only for a moment, remembered poor Fanny.
She felt delightfully at home in Hugh's drawing-room, and reflecting on this she felt how few places there now were where she did feel warmly and positively at home. Even her special boudoir at Seton Blaise, or the library at Cadogan Place; or Felix's rooms in Ebury Street, had not this quality of receiving her and soothing her spirit. She felt completely at ease. She felt as if, already, she a little bit owned the place. As she looked round at the familiar objects they looked at her with new obedient faces: the walnut writing-table, the oval card table with the alabaster vase, the pair of Kazak rugs, the green glass shell from Murano which Fanny would never allow to be used for flowers, the set of Wedgwood jugs, the dappled Chinese fawns. It was as if from each thing some veil had fallen and they glowed at her: now we are yours. She noted already certain changes she wanted to make. Some things must be moved: and those big ormolu vases must, she was almost certain, go.
Most of all the Tintoretto glowed upon her with a jewelled beneficence. It lighted the room now, like a small sun. It was not a very large picture: it represented a naked woman and was almost certainly an earlier version of
