But going into the dining-room she found his departure already in full swing. He was talking, smiling across at Mrs. Sneyde and Miss Hollebone with the eagerness of one who finds at the last moment the ice broken and communication flowing the more easily for having been dammed up and accumulating.
Sitting down unnoticed except by Vereker she presently heard Maud Hollebone, to whom he had scarcely spoken, arranging, across the width of the room, to hasten her departure.
They were going down to Italy together; as casually as guests leaving a party and finding that their way home lies in the same direction will share a hansom across London. To travelled people a journey to Italy was as simple as crossing London. Was even a bore, a tiresome experience to be got through as pleasantly as possible. Behind her manner of soncy, quietly boisterous schoolgirl indifference Maud was pleased, but still kept her poise, her oblivious independence—of what? On what, all the time going about with Mrs. Sneyde, neglecting all opportunities for recognising the existence of the house-party, aloof without being standoffish, was she feeding her so strongly-rooted life?
She was pleased of course to be carrying off as her escort the imposing oiled bronze, now almost animated as he crossed to the little table to discuss details and stood, a pillar of strength, at the disposal of the two ladies now looking so small and Mrs. Sneyde, as she fired remarks at him, so scintillating. She, no doubt, had her ideas and thought it an excellent plan. But the sister already knew too late that it was not. Had felt the project change during his approach with his week’s happiness all about him, and realised now that she represented a reprieve, was to be, by keeping Oberland before his eyes during part of his long journeying, an extension of his holiday.
Standing at close quarters, already accustomed to her companionship, he was aware, behind his animation, of sacrificing for the sake of it the precious silent interval between his strenuous idling and the arduous work ahead; was paying the price always paid for tumult half-consciously insincere. The finding of Maud also immersed in the business of departure and therefore seen in a flash of time as a comrade, had enlivened him as one is enlivened by a greeting without regard to the giver of it. That enlivening glow had already departed and he was left reduced, with its results upon his hands.
It was settled. The elopement arranged and he, with his instructions, moving off to clear her path. Perhaps secretly he was pleased after all. Perhaps his life in the south was not a flight from society and he was glad to be ever so slightly back again in its conspiracy to avoid solitude. Glad to be walking again on those sunny levels where there is never a complete break-off and departure. Never a void. Where even sorrow and suffering are softened by beautiful surroundings.
Their windows, she reflected as Eaden, meeting the le Mesuriers at the door was halted for farewells, even their hotel windows, give on to beauty. And they can always move on. And soul-sickness, the suffering of mind so often a result of fatigue and poor food and ugly surroundings, was rare amongst them. They were cheerful and amused. If bored they shift on and begin again. If bored by the life of society itself they remain within it and cut figures as cynics.
“It’s only fair to warn you,” Maud was crying from her table, “that I’m a vile fellow-traveller. Hate travelling.”
She rose and wandered to the window behind her table.
“You’re going to take away our property?”
Here she was, the unknown Miss Hollebone, close at hand, flopped in a chair, schoolgirlish.
“Rather!”
Here in this warm circle was the old freemasonry of schoolfellows, two profiles slightly turned, abrupt remarks, punctuated by jabbings at ink-stained desks, the sense of power and complete difference in relation to a stuffy old world; sudden glances, perfect happiness. Happiness that kept both quite still; hearing, feeling, seeing, in a circle of light suddenly created, making possible only slight swift words in whose echo one forgot which had spoken, which was which.
“What are we to do?” They faced each other to laugh delight.
“Don’t know. What we really want is your socialism in our world. The socialist ways you have in your world without knowing it, because you know no other ways.”
“You don’t object to us?”
“Good Lord, no! But just to cultivate you would be to go to sleep as you are all asleep.”
“You a Londoner?”
“Till death us do part.”
“Lucky dog!”
Eaden was at her elbow to whom she turned with a guarded brightness, slipped back into her own world, into the half-conscious conspiracy of avoidance. Orderly world. A pattern world, life flowing in bright set patterns under a slowly gathering cloud.
Its echoes followed Miriam into the deserted little salon. Through the open door she heard a coming and going in the hall that at this hour should be empty and eloquent of people spread far and wide in the landscape. The bright pattern was flowing into a fresh shape, flowing forward in its way, heedless of clouds, heedless of the rising tide. On the little table was Daphne’s bear on ski, immortal.
And now in the hall the sound of her, demanding. Drawn to the door Miriam saw Vereker taking the stairs two at a time, immersed in friendship. And Eaden arrested in the middle of the hall by Daphne up-gazing with white determined face.
“Look at me,” she was saying, and his down-bent face lost its smile.
“You’re not to go,” she said swiftly, in casual tone, and then breathlessly, still searching his unmoved face, “You’re not to go.”
“That’s right, Daphne,” cried Vereker pausing on the stairs. “Make him stay for the Fest, he wants to.”
Eaden watched her while she waited for Vereker’s footsteps to die away, watched her in frowning concentration while her voice came again, the voice of one who tells another’s woe: “Not for the Fest, but
