Before the day of the funeral was over the Major had once more left Kilnalough. An hour or two after he had returned to the Majestic with the other mourners word arrived that his elderly aunt in London (whose health had been poor for some time) had taken a definite turn for the worse. Her doctor had decided that it was necessary to summon the Major, who happened to be her only surviving relative. He sought out Edward, who was wandering around the hotel in a sort of agonized daze, trying to avoid the old ladies who kept bounding out of the shadows to present their condolences. Edward squeezed his arm and said that he quite understood—which possibly meant quite the opposite, namely, that he took the Major’s dying aunt to be a polite fiction. But there was nothing the Major could do about that: to have gone into de-tail would have made things worse than ever. Since he had missed the afternoon train Murphy was ordered to take him across country in the trap to Valebridge from where he might catch a later train which, with luck, might get him to Kingstown in time to catch the boat.

Edward raised his leonine head and squared his shoulders with an effort.

“Angela gave me this for you. A few days before she... you know...”

The Major glanced at the envelope and, although he had felt very little throughout this day of black ties, pale faces and subdued voices (only perhaps a vague dread, a muffled sadness), the sight of his name written in the familiar, meticulously neat handwriting abruptly squeezed his heart. And at last Angela was really dead.

“I’d better get a move on. I must say goodbye to Ripon and the twins.”

The twins were in the writing-room being comforted by a pair of portly gentlemen in tweeds; they had clearly been reluctant to remove the gossamer-black veils which suited them so perfectly and now they sat on sofas, pale and brave, their eyes shining and their slender hands being patted by the rough, hairy paws of their escorts. The Major decided not to disturb them (after all, he had never set eyes on them before today) and instead, while Murphy waited outside the front door with the trap, searched from room to room for Ripon.

He was not in the Palm Court, nor in the dining-room (where one or two pale but hungry-looking mourners were gravely feeding on a cold collation), nor in the residents’ lounge, nor in the ladies’ lounge, the ballroom, the breakfast room, the coffee room or the gun room. He stood in the corridor, baffled, trying to think where Ripon might be. He ascended to the Imperial Bar, but Ripon was not there either. It was some time since the Major had been here; a new litter of kittens were romping on the floor, charming little ginger fellows. The previous litter had grown considerably in his absence and had abandoned the carpet to the new arrivals. Instead, they dozed on dusty chairs or picked their way among the bottles on the bar, their eyes blazing. The Major was still holding Angela’s letter in his hand. He put it down on the bar and stooped to pick up one of the ginger kittens. It squirmed in his palm, mewing feebly, and dug its tiny claws into his fingers. With a sigh he dropped it and looked at his watch. He must hurry. Where on earth was Ripon? He decided, as a last resort, to try the billiard room.

There he found him, throwing a jack-knife from one end of the room to the other trying to make it stick in the oak panelling. His hand was raised to throw as the Major stepped across the threshold.

“Steady the Buffs!”

“Oh, it’s you. I just thought I’d come down here for a while. All those morbid old ladies, you know.”

“Just called to say goodbye. I’ve got to go back to England to see a relation who’s been taken ill.”

“Oh, I see,” nodded Ripon, putting on his jacket and for some reason patting his pockets anxiously. “I don’t blame you, really. It’s awful here, isn’t it? I’m thinking of trying to get out myself while the going’s good before the bloody ship sinks, so to speak. Matter of fact I’m glad you came because I’ve been wanting a word with you.”

For the second time in less than ten minutes the Major considered defending the innocence of his motives for leaving, but thought better of it.

“Well, I haven’t got much time. In fact, I haven’t got any time at all. You see, I missed the train from here and I’ve got to get myself over to Valebridge before, let me see...” He looked at his watch.

“You’ve heard the news, of course,” stated Ripon, ignoring the Major’s remarks. “It’s all over town, I expect.”

“Heard what news?” demanded the Major anxiously.

“About me and Máire Noonan. I’m sure that little bitch Sarah will have told you.”

“Yes, I did hear something. But look here, Ripon, you mustn’t go around calling girls bitches like that...I mean, really! Besides, she’s a cripple, more or less, and if you had her disability...”

“I suppose you know Máire’s a fish-eater...an R.C.?”

“Yes.”

“So there’s going to be an unholy row sooner or later. Or maybe I should say a holy row. And just at the moment it’s not such a good time, you know, what with poor old Angela and so on...But old man Noonan has been putting on the pressure, d’you see, and something’s got to be done.” Ripon paused and jabbed the knife violently into the oak panelling. “Can you lend me a couple of fivers, by the way?”

“No.”

“Just one fiver would be a help.”

“No.”

“It doesn’t really matter, of course, if you’re short.”

“Why has Mr Noonan been putting on the pressure?”

“It’s this R.C. business. He thinks that maybe I’m not going to...Well, what it all boils down to is that he wants me to make it public and the main thing is...”

“To tell your father?”

Ripon nodded gloomily.

“Well, I’m sure it will all turn out all right. After all, the Noonans are rather wealthy from what I hear. I don’t see why Edward would have any real objection once he knows you’re serious.”

“It’s this stupid religious business, Major. The point is, you see, that I’ve been trotting along to see the old priest for what they call ‘instruction’ (they’re frightful sticklers for the rules). Not my idea, I can assure you. Old man Noonan insisted on it. It’s a lot of rot, really. I mean, frankly it doesn’t make an awful lot of difference to me where we’re married, couldn’t care less about that sort of thing. The snag is that Himself is going to get into a fearful wax when he hears about it...and to tell the truth, I don’t quite know what to do.” He paused, avoiding the Major’s eye. “Fact is, I was rather hoping you might do something to help me...tip the wink to Himself and so forth.”

“Oh really! That’s out of the question, Ripon. Look here, I’m in a dreadful hurry at the moment and I simply can’t afford to miss this train (this business with my aunt is perfectly genuine, I can assure you). If you want me to give you advice I’d be glad to help you in any way I can; in fact, I’ll give you my card and you can put it all down in black and white.”

Ripon took the Major’s card and looked at it without optimism.

“If you spoke to Father he might not take it so hard, you know. If you pointed out that it’s not the end of the world and so forth. I know he respects you. I’m afraid he won’t listen if I tell him.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s out of the question,” repeated the Major, becoming agitated. “It won’t do at all if I miss this train, as I’m sure to do if I stand here talking any longer. And so, well, I just wanted to say goodbye...I’m sure everything will turn out all right in the end. Goodbye, Ripon.”

And without looking back the Major hastened along the corridor, up the stairs three at a time, through the residents’ lounge, took a short cut through the orangerie and emerged beside the statue of Queen Victoria where Murphy was waiting for him with the trap.

As they reached the last point of the drive that afforded a view of the building the Major looked back at the grey, battlemented mass that stood there like a fortress among the trees.

“Stop, Murphy!” he cried suddenly. He had just remembered: he had left Angela’s letter in the Imperial Bar!

The old manservant dragged on the reins and turned slowly to look back at the Major, his discoloured teeth exposed in a ghastly rictus. Was it the effort of reining in the pony that made him look like that or was he laughing hideously? The Major gazed fascinated at the old man’s fleshless skull and sunken eyes.

“Never mind. Drive on or we’ll miss the train.” And he thought: “I’ll get Edward to send it on to me. At this stage it can’t contain anything very urgent, after all.”

* * *

IN PRAISE OF BOXING

A man’s last line of defence is his fists. There is no sport, not even cricket, which is more essentially English than boxing. Wilde is a national hero because he has shown that in the great sport which is ours, and now is the property of the whole world, we can still produce a champion when it comes to a fight. There is no sport in the world which demands cleaner living. There is no more natural sport. Low cunning will not help him, but a quick, clear brain, a hard body, and perfect training will carry a man a long way.

* * *

The Major now found himself sitting beside his aunt’s sick-bed in London and not in the best of tempers. He had very quickly reached the conclusion that his aunt was less sick than he had been led to believe, which irritated him and caused him to suspect a conspiracy between this lonely old lady and her doctor (it was the doctor who had sent the telegram which summoned him). And although within a few months his aunt vindicated herself by dying, the Major was never quite able to discard the faint irritation he had felt at being greeted, as he raced up a beautifully polished staircase (everything looked so clean after the Majestic) beneath sombre, heavily varnished portraits of distant dead relations, and burst into her bedroom, by a wan smile rather than a death-rattle. Meanwhile he sat beside her bed with her loose-skinned, freckled hand in his and murmured rather testily: “Of course you’ll get better...You’re only imagining things.” But even while consoling his aunt his thoughts would very often revert to Edward. “If I’d stayed a little longer,” he kept thinking, “I might have been able to cushion the shock and make him see reason about Ripon and his lady-friend. After all, it can’t be as serious as all that.” Nevertheless he knew instinctively that the possibilities of mutual incomprehension between Edward and Ripon would be prodigious, and he continued to ruminate on them as he held a glass of verbena tea to his aunt’s faintly moaning lips and commanded her brusquely to take a sip. To tell the truth, he felt rather like a man who has walked away from a house drenched in petrol leaving a naked candle burning on the table.

Here he was in London and nobody seemed to be dying. What was he doing here anyway? The doctor appeared to be avoiding him these days and when they did meet he wore an apologetic air, as if to say that it really wasn’t his fault. But at last the day came when the doctor, with a new confidence, informed him that his aunt had had a serious haemorrhage during the night. And even his aunt, though pale as paper, looked gratified. This news upset the Major, because he was fond of his aunt and really did not want her to die, however much he might want her to stop being a nuisance. However, in spite of the haemorrhage, his aunt still showed no sign of passing on to “a better life” (as she unhopefully referred to it herself when, for want of another topic of interest to both of them, she embarked, as she frequently did, on conversations beginning: “All this will be yours, Brendan...”).

The news from Ireland was dull and dispiriting: an occasional attack on a lonely policeman or a raid for arms on some half-baked barracks. If one was not actually living in Ireland (as the lucky Major no longer was) how could one possibly take an interest when, for instance, at the same time Negroes and white men were fighting it out in the streets of Chicago? Now that gripped the Major’s imagination much more forcibly. Unlike the Irish troubles one knew instantly which side everyone was on. In the Chicago race-riots people were using their skins like uniforms. And there were none of the devious tactics employed by the Shinners, the pettifogging ambushes and assassinations. In Chicago the violence was naked, a direct expression of feeling, not of some remote and dubious patriotic heritage. White men dragged Negroes off streetcars; Negroes fired rifles from housetops and alleyways; an automobile full of Negroes raced through the streets of a white district with its occupants promiscuously firing rifles. And Chicago was only a fragment of the competition that Ireland had to face. What about the dire behaviour of the Bolshevists? The gruesome murders, the rapes, the humiliations of respectable ladies and gentlemen? In late 1919 hardly a day went by without an eye-witness account of such horrors being confided to the press by some returned traveller who had managed to escape with his skin. And India: the North-West Frontier...Amritsar? No wonder that by the time the Major’s eye had reached the news from Ireland his palate had been sated with brighter, bloodier meat. Usually he turned to the cricket to see whether Hobbs had made another century. Presently the cricket season came to an end. A rainy, discouraging autumn took its place. Soon it would be Christmas.

One day the Major received a telegram. To his surprise it was signed SARAH. It said: DON’T READ LETTER RETURN UNOPENED. The Major had not yet received any letter and waited with impatience for it to arrive. Next morning he was holding it in one hand and tapping it against the fingertips of the other. After a brief debate with himself he opened it.

She had no reason for sending him a letter (she wrote) and he didn’t have to read it if he didn’t want to. But she was in bed again with “an unmentionable illness” and bored to tears, literally (“I sometimes burst into tears for no reason at all”) and, besides, her face was so covered in spots that she looked “like a leopard” and she had become so ugly that little children fled wailing if they saw her at the window and nobody ever came to see her these days and she had no friends now that poor Angela had died and (that reminded her) why had he not come over to say hello to her on the day of Angela’s funeral...after all, she (Sarah) didn’t bite, but then she supposed that he was too high and mighty to be seen talking to the likes of her and he probably, anyway, couldn’t read her writing because she was scribbling away in bed, her fingers “half frozen off” and surrounded by stone hot-water jars against which she kept cracking her “poor toes” and which were practically freezing anyway...and besides, besides, she was positively bored to distraction with everything and there was simply nothing to do in Kilnalough, nothing at all, and she would certainly run away if she could (which, of course, she couldn’t, being a “poor, miserable cripple” into the bargain... and full of self-pity, he would surely be thinking)...

But enough of that, about herself there was nothing of interest to say. The Major must be wanting to hear what was happening in Kilnalough and at the Majestic and the answer to that was...ructions!!! Edward Spencer challenging Father O’Meara (practically) to a duel for improper association with Ripon. Old Mr Noonan threatening to horsewhip the young pup (Ripon, that was) if he didn’t stop playing fast and loose with Máire (did the Major remember the fat pudding of a girl they had met one day in the street?) and show whether he was a gentleman or what he was, anyway, begod...And as to what that might mean the Major’s guess was as good as hers...only it wouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that the above-mentioned fat pudding was pregnant with triplets by the young pup. And to make matters worse Fr O’Meara was threatening to sue Edward for something the twins had done to him, she didn’t quite know what but she’d try and find out and let him know. Anyway, there was surely worse to come.

However, she was pretty certain that such provincial matters would hardly interest him now that he was back in the big city...Was it true that in London even the horses wore leather shoes? But she was only teasing him, of course. The English (that was to say, “the enemy”) were so serious one could never risk making a joke in case they believed you.

Had the Major heard the very latest, God forgive her (in fact, God forgive everybody), that had been happening right under her nose all this while...which was that one of her father’s clerks, a red-faced lad up from the country with a smathering of the “mattermathics” had dared, had had the temerity, had made so bold-faced as to get up his nerve to, in spite of her spots (which must show what strong stomachs country people had), actually fall in love with her! ! ! Without so much as a by-your-leave! He, the Major, would undoubtedly be as amazed as she was that even a country lad who only knew about cows (and himself smelled like a farmyard) could have his wits so deranged as to consider marrying a “total cripple” like herself.

Himself: “Will ye walk out with me, Miss Devlin?”

Me: “How can I, you peasant oaf, with no legs?” And now every time she went out of the house she would find her “rural swain” touching his forelock and blushing like a ripe tomato and the whole thing was positively sickening and disgusting. There surely must be something wrong with someone (apart altogether from the things which immediately greeted the eye and the nose) who would marry someone like her sooner than one of the millions of girls who could churn his butter and wash his clothes and thump his dough and have a brat a year like a pullet laying eggs from dawn to dusk without so much as batting an eyelid. And what did the Major think of such a thing anyway? Wasn’t she right to treat the whole thing as nonsense? But the worst was yet to come.

One could hardly believe it, but the “rural swain” had had the temerity to approach her father with his “bovine proposal” and had even inquired if there might not be a little bit of a dowry now to sweeten the bargain, a couple of heifers and a few quid, perhaps, or a brace of pigs and a few auld hens and then maybe later on a wee share in the bank (which he seemed to think was something like a farm for growing money) and so on and so forth, with lots of blushes and his breeches hanging off of him like potato sacks on a scarecrow! And the very worst was yet to come!

Incredible though it might seem, her father, instead of sneering at the young bog-trotter’s pretensions to his fair daughter’s hand, boxing his ears and sending him back to scratching in his ledgers or whatever he did (stoking the boiler for all she knew), had said that, by Jove, in such circumstances one did well to treat all proposals with serious consideration and though, of course, it would never occur to “me or your mother” to influence her in any way, it nevertheless seemed unwise to send likely lads packing, up from the country or not (after all, they could be groomed and citified to cope with Kilnalough’s undemanding standards), before one had given them a fair run for their money! The Major would hardly believe it, but there was even worse to come!

The “bovine suitor,” greatly encouraged by her father’s attitude, had now taken to lurking beside the gate whenever she went outside, greeting her with familiar winks, and had even approached her near enough to suggest that she should play him “a bit of a tune” on her piano and even, no doubt considering the conquest effected, had placed a hand like a gelatine lobster on her “fair shrinking shoulder,” murmuring that she should accord him “a hug.” Naturally, he had received a tongue-lashing for his trouble. Yet he had stood there grinning and red-faced (the blush, she realized, was permanent), quite unabashed. What did the Major make of her predicament? Did he not agree that it would be better to accept the rigours of spinsterhood and penury (“your mother and I won’t always be here to look after you, you know”) rather than submit to such a grisly fate? Indeed, her only support in the matter had come from a totally unsuspected source, namely the incredibly ancient and insufferable Dr Ryan whom she had always thought of as her “arch-enemy.” He had told her father flatly that he would as soon see her marry a gorilla in the Dublin Zoo as the above-mentioned peasant Lothario and that if he so much as heard mention of the matter again he would see to it that all his patients in Kilnalough transferred their business to some other bank. So for the moment there was an armistice. But for how long? The more he thought about it the more her father wanted to marry her off. So no wonder that she had been overtaken by her “unmentionable illness.” Perhaps, like poor Angela, she would just wilt away and probably no one would care. The Major, she was certain, wouldn’t care in the least.

And who knew? Perhaps her parents were right. Perhaps there was no real difference between one man and another. After all (she sometimes found herself thinking, sinful though such thoughts were), after all, are we so very different from animals? And animals made less fuss about such matters.

By the way, she had forgotten to mention one curious thing about the “rural swain” (whose name was Mulcahy, incidentally): in his lapel he wore a plain gold ring. She had asked him what it meant. “An Fáinne,” he had replied: Oh, she had eyes in her head, she had told him impatiently. But what was it for, that was what she wanted to know? Oh, so she “had the Irish”? Just a little, she had admitted, not wanting to encourage his respect. Well, it was like a circle for Irish-speaking people, he had explained, so that they might recognize each other by the ring and talk to each other in Irish rather than in the tongue of the foreigner. They had a retreat, it appeared: a number of young men and women anxious to perfect themselves in the ancestral language of Ireland, all off in a cottage in the depths of the country somewhere chattering away in Irish from morn till night. Had the Major ever heard of such a wonderful idea? She had to admit that that was one point in Mulcahy’s favour (admittedly, the only one). He had even asked her to join the circle (though no doubt his motives were impure). So the “rural swain,” though he did not do at all, though he was impossible, at least had gained a meagre point.

A few days later she had met a young Englishman, an officer from the Curragh camp staying with his uncle for a few days, and she had told him about this idea of people speaking Irish to each other. “How bizarre!” he had exclaimed. “How delightful! How original!” and he had told her about a club he had joined at Oxford which specialized in trying to make contact with poltergeists in haunted houses.

Ah, but the Major wouldn’t be interested in all this dull tattle from the provinces since he was in London at the very centre of things, at the very centre of the Empire, of “Life” even! She had abused his good nature by rambling on so long about herself and her own petty problems. He must think of her as she herself thought of the bovine aspirant for her affections, Mulcahy. And besides, besides, her fingers were now frozen to the point where they were practically “dropping off,” the hot-water bottles were lumps of ice on every side of her, her ink-well too was freezing over and her room was so cold that with every breath the paper she was writing on would disappear in a cloud of steam. The weather was quite appalling, cold and damp beyond belief, and the days so dark that even at midday one had to turn up the gas mantle in order to read a book or do some sewing. What misery, the Major must be thinking, to be an Irishwoman, to be living in Ireland, to live all of one’s life in Ireland beneath the steady rain and the despair of winter and the boredom, the boredom! But no, she was glad she was Irish and he could think what he liked! She thought of him, however, with affection and remained truly his.

Having read this, the Major stood up and then sat down again. He turned over the thick, crinkly sheaf of writing-paper. The coffee pot had grown cold on the breakfast table. Well, he thought, what a remarkable letter...I must answer it immediately.

And so he sat down, ignoring his aunt’s faint cries from upstairs, and wrote a long and slightly delirious reply as if he too were in a fever, gripped in the claws of boredom, passionate and intense, surrounded by icy hot-water bottles. He said in substance that even with spots (and he couldn’t believe that they were as bad as she claimed) nobody but herself could ever for a moment consider her ugly. That it was, alas, only too natural that the moth should be attracted by the flame, that the “rural swain” (not to mention other young men) should become besotted with her charms; nevertheless, he agreed with Dr Ryan (the “senile old codger,” as Ripon called him) that, splendid fellow though Mulcahy no doubt was, it would be a shame to waste her on someone so little able to appreciate her culture, refinement and intelligence. Had she no relation in London whom she could stay with for a while with a view to stimulating “une heureuse rencontre,” as the Frenchies put it, with a young man worthy of her? If not then she must certainly come and stay with him, duly chaperoned, of course. He would be only too glad to do everything in his power to rescue this “cultured” pearl from the Irish swine.

In the meantime she must write and tell him everything that was going on at the Majestic. And she must write immediately. He was on tenterhooks. The thin, starving rats of curiosity were nibbling at his bones. As for London, though it was indeed the centre of the Empire it was no more the centre of “Life” than, say, Chicago, Amritsar, or Timbuctoo—“Life” being everywhere equal and coeval, though during the winter in Kilnalough one might be excused for thinking that “Life’s” fires were banked up if not actually burning low—certainly, if one happened to be in bed with an unmentionable illness.

With that, he hastily sealed the letter with dry lips and posted it. Then he sat down with impatience to await the reply. But the days passed and no reply came.

* * *

Dispatches from Fiume this morning state that Gabriele D’Annunzio’s expedition has succeeded beyond the most sanguine expectations of those who took part in it. All along his march the poet was joined by military contingents which broke away from their camps. He summoned the Allied Commanders and troops to withdraw...The Italian commander, General Pittaluga, immediately tried to stop the advance, but in vain. He sent out troops to meet those of D’Annunzio and to order them to stop outside the town, but his own men immediately fraternized with those of D’Annunzio, and embraced one another. The general twice sent out nineteen armoured cars with machine-guns, but they also immediately went over to D’Annunzio. A dramatic scene then followed. General Pittaluga, with his last detachment, went to D’Annunzio at the point where he was entering the town. He halted a few paces from the advancing column, and his own soldiers remained a few paces behind. D’Annunzio ordered his car to stop and jumped out. The troops on both sides stood at the halt, impassive and silent.

An Animated Conversation

There were a few minutes of animated conversation between the general and the poet. General Pittaluga saluted D’Annunzio and then said to him: “This is the way to ruin Italy.” The poet replied instantly: “You will ruin Italy if you oppose destiny by an infamous policy.”

The general asked what were the poet’s intentions. The reply was: “Not one shot shall be fired by my men if their passage is free.”

The general retorted: “I have strict orders and must prevent an act which may have incalculable consequences for my country.”

The poet replied: “I understand your words, General. You will order your men to fire on my soldiers, their brothers. But before you do so, order them to fire on me. Here I am. Let them first fire on me.”

Saying this he moved towards the soldiers, exposing his breast adorned with the medal of military honour. There was a movement among the troops, who approached the poet and cheered him. The general saw that his opposition was useless. He walked up to the poet and complimented him. The soldiers on both sides immediately cheered the poet and the general, and without further orders they crossed the road which divides Fiume from the suburbs and entered the town. General Pittaluga withdrew alone and the soldiers opened a way for him.

* * *

Mr Noonan, though a miller by profession, was an admirer of the military life and liked to wear clothes that gave him a soldierly air. He arrived at the Majestic wearing his most severe garb, a suit of khaki material garnished with black epaulettes. He unwisely parted company with his chauffeur at the gates of the Majestic (he had never visited the place before) and started to walk up the drive. He had been delayed on some business matter and Edward, who had long since ceased to expect him, had changed into his gardening clothes and was digging a flower-bed, thinking that some exercise might benefit his liver. Since he had never met Mr Noonan, he assumed that this was merely a somewhat elderly and irascible telegraph boy and told him to go on up to the house. Mr Noonan, believing he had just had an encounter with a particularly insolent gardener, did so but with bad grace. Pausing for a moment to acknowledge the statue of Queen Victoria, he then proceeded to climb the steps and be swallowed up by the front door of the Majestic, in whose various tracts and organs he wandered, increasingly furious, while Edward dug peacefully in the garden and wondered whether he would lose face (and establish Ripon’s guilt) by going to pay a visit on Mr Noonan at his home.

Edward and Mr Noonan probably had more in common than they ever had a chance to realize. Neither, at this stage, was the least enthusiastic about a union of their respective children. Mr Noonan, looking round the mouldering caverns of the Majestic, no doubt saw immediately that only a massive transfusion of money could keep the place habitable for a few years longer; in a material sense it was a poor match for the daughter of Noonan’s Flour. As for the quality which Mr Noonan had once found faintly appetizing when he considered the prospect of having Ripon Spencer for a son-in-law, the quality of “breeding” (and with it automatic entry into the ruling class in Ireland from which Mr Noonan, in spite of his wealth and influence in business matters, was virtu-ally excluded), he had now become extremely dubious as to whether Ripon possessed it in adequate quantities. Besides, by the autumn of 1919 it had become clear to everyone in Ireland with the possible exception of the Unionists themselves that the Unionist cause had fallen into a decline. Add to that Ripon’s taint of Protestantism (which in Mr Noonan’s view no amount of “instruction” could scrub off) and the lad was a truly unsavoury prospect.

Edward’s feelings were virtually a mirror-image of Mr Noonan’s. He had a profound lack of interest in money, never having been sufficiently short of it, and was positively chilled by the idea that his daughter-in-law (buxom and rosy-cheeked) should be represented on packets of flour available to the grubby fingers of the populace for a penny or two. He was by no means anxious to dissolve the “breeding” of the Spencers in a solution of Irish “bog Catholicism” (a daughter of Cardinal Newman might have been another matter). In these troubled times one clearly had to close the ranks, not open them...or so he thought as he set off to wander around the corridors of the Majestic in search of the “dratted” elderly telegraph boy (he supposed it was a telegraph boy). The two men failed to meet immediately, however, since Mr Noonan, tired of waiting, had struck off towards the west wing, Edward towards the east.

Little by little, as they moved back towards each other, Edward’s thoughts turned to the main and unbridgeable chasm, the Roman Catholicism of the Noonans: the unhealthy smell of incense, the stupefying and bizarre dogmatic precepts, the enormous families generated by ignorance and a doctrine of “the more souls the better” (no matter whether their corporeal envelopes went barefoot or not), the absurd squadron of saints buzzing overhead like chaps in the Flying Corps supposedly ever ready to lend a hand to the blokes on the ground (and each with his own speciality), the Pope with all his unhealthy finery, the services in a gibberish of Latin that no one understood, least of all the ignorant, narrow-minded and hypocritical priests. Well, such thoughts do not actually have to occur by a process of thinking; they run in the blood of the Protestant Irish.

At this point he found himself at the foot of the staircase leading to the servants’ quarters and remembered that the maids had been complaining about a supposed colony of rats. There was no shortage of them in the cellars, of course, but who ever heard of rats in the upper storeys? The whole thing was plainly nonsense; all the same, since he was there on the spot he might as well have a look round.

The inspection did not take long and it came as no surprise to him that no rodent crossed his path. He peered with distaste into the cramped little rooms with their sloping ceilings. They had a curious and alien smell which he could not quite identify; perhaps it came from a lingering of cheap perfume on Sunday clothes (seeing the maids out of uniform in Kilnalough, he very often failed to recognize them and stared in surprise if they acknowledged him). Wherever it came from, he associated it with the distressingly vulgar holy pictures on the wall, with the chocolate-coloured rosary beads on the table, with the crucifix above the bed.

“Education is what these people need. And they think they’re fit to govern a country!”

Satisfied that the rats were imaginary, Edward resumed his languid search for the telegraph boy.

Mr Noonan had just had a curious experience. He had met a maidservant hurrying down a corridor carrying a tray of teacups and toasted scones together with a large and (it must be admitted) desirable seed-cake. He had beckoned her, summoned her to his side. “Come here to me now,” he had said to her. But, to his surprise, hardly had the girl seen him when she turned and fled back the way she had come. Not knowing what a business it was to get afternoon tea at the Majestic, the bribes and cajolery that had to be administered, the deadly feuds that could be sponsored by one guest spotting another settling down to a clandestine sup of tea and bite of toast in a remote corner, Mr Noonan was astonished at this behaviour.

“Where is the master?” he called after her. But she had scurried away and he was left listening to the fading clatter of her shoes on the tiles. A little later, however, he realized that there was a person following him, though very slowly, along the corridor. It turned out to be an old lady, a gentlewoman to judge by her clothing, moving forward with two sticks which she planted firmly in front of her one after the other in the manner of an Alpine guide. He halted and allowed her to catch up, her eyes on the ground, her breathing stertorous.

“Where is Mr Spencer?” he demanded.

The lady lifted her watery eyes and surveyed him; then she raised one of her sticks in a trembling, arthritic hand. The brass ferrule that tipped it performed a wavering figure-eight a little above his head. He took her to be indicating that his way led upwards.

He was not a young man himself. His chest had been giving him trouble. His blood-pressure was too high. He’d started with nothing, d’ye see, and done it all himself. Self-raising, like his own flour, was what they said in Kilnalough.

“Now what I’d better be doing is...”

He was alone once more and, one way or another, had climbed to the floor above. The only reason he knew this for certain was that he happened to be standing at a surprisingly clean window looking down on the drive and, incidentally, on Edward’s Daimler. It was raining very hard—so hard that a mist of spray was rising off the roof and bonnet of the car. Where was he? When had it started raining? He shouldn’t let himself get in a rage because these days there was always a thick mist, bloody and opaque, waiting to roll in and blot out the landmarks. Now wait, the motor car had been left in front of the building, he remembered seeing it. Well, the great staircase with the chandelier was in the front of the building too...so that meant that he was on or beside the staircase.

He was squeezed by a really breathtaking grip of anger when, on looking round, he found that this was not so. There was no staircase in sight. It was unfair and spiteful—a real British trick, the kind of murthering, hypocritical...Mother of God! he would like to have smashed a window, he had even raised the heavy ash handle of his furled umbrella to shatter the glass. He was restrained, though, by the sudden thought that the Englishman might consider it bad form. Besides, the window was already broken...that is, had obviously been broken on some other occasion, since it lacked its pane entirely. He could not have done it himself. There were no jagged edges. That was why it looked so clean. The rain, moreover, was pattering on the window sill and had darkened the faded crimson carpet (strewn with tiny three-pronged crowns) in the shape of a half-moon.

Having regrouped his forces, Mr Noonan set out along a carpeted corridor (while Edward continued to search disconsolately for him on the floor below), peering through the open doors of the many rooms he passed—nobody made any attempt to close doors here, it appeared—at double beds, enormous and sinful, without a trace of religion, at wash-basins and towels starched like paper and grey with dust. And this was what his only daughter was supposed to be marrying into!

In one room he came upon a vast pile of stone hot-water bottles, maybe two or three hundred of them. In another a makeshift washing-line had been stretched and forgotten, the clothing on it dry and riddled with moth-holes. In yet another he heard voices. He stopped and listened...but no, he had been mistaken (Edward at this moment was peering into the room directly below). At the next door, however, he definitely heard voices, so he entered with some confidence. He found himself, not in a bedroom but on a gallery that ran round beneath the ceiling of a large book-lined room. The voices were coming from below. He peered over the railing (as Edward, moving away from him once more, started towards the west wing).

Below, two identical girls were sitting on a studded sofa with books in their hands. Opposite them, in an armchair but sitting very straight, was a small elderly lady wearing a lace cap. Her milky eyes were directed towards the girls, while her hands, constantly moving and apparently disconnected from the rest of her body, knitted away tirelessly in her lap.

“Are you sitting up straight, Charity?”

“Yes, Granny.”

“Faith?”

“Yes, Granny.”

The two golden heads turned towards each other with their tongues out.

“A lady never slouches in her chair as if she had no backbone.”

“No, Granny.”

Faith let herself sink back with her mouth open, miming inertia, while Charity shook with silent laughter.

“Sit still!”

“We are bally well sitting still.”

“Don’t answer back! You’ll be kept here all afternoon unless you behave. Charity, are your knees together?”

“Yes, Granny.”

Charity pulled her skirt up over her knees and threw one leg over the arm of the sofa, exposing pink thighs.

“I’m sitting up straight, Granny,” she said, and snatching a pencil from Faith’s hand began to puff on it as if it were a cigarette-holder. While flicking the ash she happened to lift her eyes and saw Mr Noonan.

“Good girl,” said the old lady.

The twins stared up at Mr Noonan and he stared down at the twins. At length Charity said: “There’s an old man with an umbrella in the room, Granny.”

“An old man? What does he want?”

“What d’you want?” demanded Faith firmly.

“Where is Mr Spencer? I won’t stand for it,” stuttered Mr Noonan furiously. “I’m looking for...I shall speak to my solicitor!”

“What is he doing up near the ceiling?” the old lady wanted to know.

“We’re in the library, Granny. There’s a sort of balcony...”

“Well, whoever you are, I’m sure you won’t find your solicitor up there. Show him to the door, Faith. You stay here, Charity, it doesn’t take both of you.”

Faith was already half-way up the spiral iron staircase to the gallery. Without a word she grasped Mr Noonan by the sleeve and towed him back the way he had come, down a dark flight of stairs, along a corridor, through a deserted cocktail bar, into the lobby and up to the front door which, with an immense effort, she dragged open.

“Peeping Tom!” she hissed and, placing a hand on his back, gave him a violent shove which propelled him out into the rain at a reluctant gallop.

A few moments later Edward, looking out of a window without a pane on the first floor and thinking that all this rain would give his Daimler a good wash, noticed the elderly telegraph boy hurrying away down the drive. The fellow halted for a moment and shook his umbrella angrily at the Majestic.

“Good heavens!” murmured Edward. “I don’t suppose that could have been old what’s-his-name, by any chance...”

* * *

THE HORRORS OF BOLSHEVISM
Irish Ladies’ Terrible Experiences

Reuter’s representative has just had an interview with two Irish girls, the Misses May and Eileen Healy, who have just reached London, having escaped from Kieff with nothing but the clothes—thin linen dresses—they were wearing.

They tell a terrible story of the Bolshevist outrage, of which they were personal witnesses. They said that the mental strain was awful and one, Miss Eileen Healy, has lost 3 st. in weight.

“In a side building, a sort of garage, I saw a wall covered with blood and brains. In the middle was cut a channel or drain, full of congealed blood, and just outside in the garden, one hundred and twenty-seven nude, mutilated corpses, including those of some women, who had been flung into a hole...

“Ten Bolshevists occupied rooms next mine. There was a beautiful drawing-room filled with valuable furniture. There, night after night, they carried on drunken orgies of an unspeakable character with women whom they brought from the town, and I lay on my bed with the door barricaded until from sheer exhaustion I went to sleep...

“The terrorism of the Reds is really much worse than anything I have read of, and to those in this country who believe the story is exaggerated I would only say go out and see for yourselves.”

* * *

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TRIUMPH
Marshal Foch’s Analysis

In conversation with a representative of the Echo de Paris Marshal Foch said that he had won the war by avoiding unnecessary emotions and conserving all his strength so as to devote himself whole-heartedly to his task. “War requires an ingenious mind, always alert, and one day the reward of victory comes. Don’t talk to me about glory, beauty, enthusiasm. They are verbal manifestations. Nothing exists except facts and facts alone are of any use. A useful fact, and one that satisfied me, was the signing of the armistice.”

In conclusion Marshal Foch said: “Without trying to drag in miracles just because clear vision is vouchsafed to a man, because afterwards it turns out that this clear vision has determined movements fraught with enormous consequences in a formidable war, I still hold that this clear vision comes from a Providential force, in the hands of which one is an instrument, and that the victorious decision emanates from above, by the higher and Divine will.”

* * *

Nineteen-twenty. One, two, three weeks of January—grey, cold weather, fog in the streets, dirty snow underfoot—elapsed before the Major finally found another letter from Sarah propped against the toast-rack on the breakfast table.

“Dear Major,” she wrote, “it was wrong of you to read that letter when I told you not to. I was ill when I wrote it and had a fever, as I’m sure I said. You needn’t expect me to apologize, however, since I took the trouble of warning you not to read it. It’s your own fault if you came across something that didn’t please you. About Mr Mulcahy, I regret very much making fun of him as he’s a decent enough sort of person and I exaggerated a great deal. As for being rescued from the Irish swine, as you remark, I can assure you that there’s really no need for that as they and I agree very well (perhaps because I’m one of the same swine myself). Also, as regards London, I’m perfectly content where I am. Nevertheless, I must thank you for your offer, because, though unsuitable, I’m sure it was kindly meant.”

“Ah,” thought the Major, chastened, “she’s angry with me and no doubt thinks that I’m contemptuous of Kilnalough. Perhaps my letter was tactless.” And he hurriedly wrote to apologize, pleading with her to forgive his tactlessness. Would she not satisfy his curiosity anyway? He was devoured with curiosity to know how the affair between Máire and Ripon had come out? And what was this thing that the twins had done to Fr O’Meara? And how was Edward bearing up under the strain?

All she knew (Sarah wrote back) was that Ripon and Máire were living in Rathmines with “a little one” on the way. Had he run away in the middle of the night with his fiancée? Had he been thrown out of his father’s house without a penny? Nobody knew for sure, but several stories were circulating in Kilnalough. According to the one she believed (or liked to believe, anyway) Ripon had half run away and half been ejected. What had happened (so this story went) was that Edward had given him a sum of money, driven him to the railway station and put him on the train for Dublin with strict orders to stay there and get up to no mischief until he, Edward, had settled the affair in Kilnalough. This done, he had arranged to meet Mr Noonan at the Majestic to talk things over. Meanwhile Ripon had only allowed the train to carry him to the next station up the line. There, after a long argument, he had finally succeeded in extracting a refund from the station-master on the rest of his ticket to Dublin. Then he had returned with all speed to Kilnalough, climbed the Noonan’s garden wall causing poor Máire to faint (she thought he was a tinker), revived her, informed her she was liberated (she had been “confined to barracks” by her military-minded father), helped her to pack a suitcase, bribed a man he saw standing at the gate whom he supposed was one of Noonan’s servants (but who was merely a bystander) and finally fled with her to the station while her father was still at the Majestic. By all accounts (or rather, by this particular account) the Kilnalough station-master came close to having a heart attack when young Ripon, whom he had only just seen go off on the last train to Dublin, appeared in time for the next one and went off on that one too, accompanied by a heavily veiled lady whose ample proportions and pink ankles suggested that it might not be impossible that this was “a certain person,” he’d say no more; as he was handing this veiled lady up into the carriage he had caught “a whiff of something not unlike chloroform...but, mind you, I’m not saying it was nor it wasn’t though, begod, it was as like as the divil!” Well, that was a story the Major could believe if he liked, the English (or “the enemy,” as she preferred to think of them) being so literal, the Major in particular being as literal as a lump of dough, she had no doubt that he’d believe it all.

As for the attack of the twins on Fr O’Meara, here was another story that the Major could try out on his digestion. The brave and worthy Fr O’Meara had taken it into his head one day to pay a visit on Ripon whom he had been grooming spiritually (the Major being a “beastly Prod” would fail to see the need for this, she was sure) for the marriage he contemplated with the miller’s daughter. He had cycled up the drive past two identical girls of such radiant countenance that he had at first mistaken them for “angels from heaven” (he was later said to have explained, while still in a state of shock). However, when one of them made a disagreeable remark he quickly perceived his mistake and pedalled onwards out of earshot disturbed, in particular that a young girl should know such words, in general at God’s habit, frequently observable here below, of mixing the fair with the foul, the good with the evil, and so on.

Before reaching the front door he had come upon Ripon in the orangerie, apparently in the act of upbraiding a flustered girl in maid’s uniform who had no doubt neglected some household chore (though she, Sarah, had her own opinion of what the rogue was doing). Ripon had appeared startled and suggested a “stroll.” Fr O’Meara, who envisaged a reflective promenade discussing extra-terrestrial matters, agreed immediately and they set off, Ripon heading at a great pace towards the bushes and looking round somewhat furtively the while. Fr O’Meara had trouble keeping up with him, but after the first hundred yards or so the pace slackened and Ripon asked him a few distrait questions about the catechism. Then somewhat abruptly he said he’d have to be going and marched off without even conducting his visitor back to his bicycle. The kindly priest, acknowledging to himself that he was more at home with ecclesiastical than with social etiquette, promptly forgave the lad. On second thoughts he also forgave the young girl who had addressed the obscenity to him. His mind at rest, he clambered back on to his machine and cycled down the drive.

It seemed, though versions of this particular version of the story differed, that disaster struck him at some point before he reached the gate. As he pedalled on his way, it seemed, he was lassoed from the overhanging branches of an oak tree. According to the most dramatic version of the version he was plucked out of the saddle and hung there swinging gently to and fro while his bicycle sailed on into some rhododen-dron bushes. More probably, however, the noose missed him (luckily, since it might have broken his neck) but caught on the pillion, shrunk rapidly, tightened, halted the bicycle suddenly and tipped Fr O’Meara over the handlebars. Stunned though he was by his fall he was willing to swear that as he unsteadily tried to pick himself up two smiling angelic faces were looking down on him from above. It was a matter for the police, no doubt about it. Charges of assault were prepared for the R.M., together with counter-charges of trespass (Ripon having assured his father that the priest was nothing to do with him) and theft (some apples had been stripped from trees in the orchard). Other charges were being considered and had there been a magistrate to hear them this sudden sprouting of litigation might have grown so dense and confusing as to become, inside a few days, entirely beyond resolution. But there wasn’t. This representative of the foreign oppressor had received a number of menacing letters from the I.R.A. and had wisely retired. A new R.M. was expected but in the meantime criminals of all hues, includ-ing the twins, were running the streets at liberty. In fact Fr O’Meara had learned with satisfaction that while he was still removing the gravel from his grazed palms these two violent girls had been stripped and caned by their father as if they’d been boys; the thought of this retribution did something to mollify him. As for Sarah, although she had to admit that the “odious brats” had some spirit, she sympathized entirely with the unfortunate priest. Almost everything with those two girls, she said, had a habit of beginning amusingly and ending painfully.

Now, had that satisfied the Major’s curiosity? If he wanted to hear the other versions he would have to come to Kilnalough, because she was getting writer’s cramp...Yes, and as for his question about Edward, she never saw him these days...Since Angela was dead she no longer had any reason to go to the Majestic. Indeed, she was bored, frightfully bored, and looking forward to being amused by the Major... “Amuse me, dear Major, amuse me!” Life was intolerable in Kilnalough.

But wait! She had an idea. The Major must reply and tell her precisely, yes or no, whether he believed the stories about Ripon and the twins. He must do so immediately. It was essential, so that she’d know what sort of man the Major was... though, of course, she really knew that already. Still, he must write and tell her anyway. And by the way, perhaps she would visit him in London after all. There was a chance she would go to a clinic in France for a while. Her walking had improved greatly and she wasn’t nearly such a “miserable cripple” as she had been when the Major knew her. She still, in spite of his dull letters, thought of him with affection and remained truly his.

The Major didn’t know what to do about this letter. If he said he did believe the stories about Ripon and the twins she would accuse him of being “as literal as a lump of dough.” If he said he didn’t, she would almost certainly accuse him of having no sense of fun, no imagination. After two or three days’ deliberation he wrote back to say that he believed parts of them (and enjoyed the other parts). A postcard was all he got in reply. It accused him of having made a cautious and typically British compromise. And it ended with the words: “I despise compromises!”

All the time this correspondence was taking place the Major’s aunt continued to linger in a twilight stage between living and dying which he found most unsatisfactory. At the time of her first haemorrhage a night-nurse had been taken on, a sombre lady of middle age who had a habit of enjoining his aunt to “put a brave face on it, my dear,” commenting that “Madam’s pain won’t last for ever,” or informing her that her “only hope is in the Lord,” while discreetly averting her face to eat steadily throughout the night. Though most of this woman’s remarks had a religious cast and few of them were sequential she occasionally spoke of other deaths she had witnessed, invariably those of ladies in comfortable circumstances. One of them, a Mrs Baxter, had “died in the arms of Jesus.” Another had provided her with food that was unsuitable. Yet another had beautiful daughters who “went to dance at balls during their mother’s agony.” One story she often repeated concerned the lovely and youthful Mrs Perry, far gone with tuberculosis, whose husband, a ravening brute, had claimed his marital rights until the very end, causing her to leave the sick-room for hours at a time, so that very often it would be nearly dawn before she was allowed back to comfort his victim—who had been uncomplaining, however. Describing this, she would aim black looks at the Major as if he were responsible.

Somehow this story made a very painful impression on the Major. He imagined the lovely Mrs Perry and her husband quite differently. He was sure that they had been passionately in love. What other reason could the husband have had for making love to a woman with tuberculosis? The physical act of love remained the one crumbling bridge between them. He pictured the slow nights of despair. He wondered whether the husband had also hoped to fall ill with tuberculosis. One night he had an agonizing dream about Mrs Perry and the next morning he felt so disturbed that he sought out the night-nurse and dismissed her with a month’s pay. He thought: “Really, I’m still a young man...there’s time enough to become morbid when I’m old.”

At about this time he read about the siege of the R.I.C. barracks at Ballytrain—half a dozen constables overrun by a massive horde of Shinners—over a hundred of them, like the dervishes at Khartoum. Edward had called them individual criminals out for what they could get. Never, thought the Major with a smile, never had so many individual criminals been seen together in one place!

The Major had invited Sarah to stay at his aunt’s house as she passed through London on her way to France. Would this not be considered improper? she wanted to know. What would his aunt think? The Major replied that his aunt would certainly find nothing amiss in Sarah staying with them. Indeed, she would act as chaperone (his only worry was that the old lady, having survived so long, should die prema-turely now that her services were needed). So presently Sarah arrived.

The Major, sunk in a slough of despond, his mind as barren as the frozen snow that lay on the streets, had been awaiting her arrival with indifference, even a vague dread. But Sarah appeared to have left the malicious side of her nature in Kilnalough. She was so affectionate and ingenuous, so excited to be in London, so obviously impressed by the Major’s air of authority and distinction in these new surroundings as she clung to his arm (the confidence with which she was walking these days astonished him) that in no time at all he was disarmed. In restaurants she was apprehensive lest she be “noticed.” The Major mustn’t let her use the wrong knife and fork or she’d die of mortification. And how did all the diners (how did the Major himself?) look so much at ease in front of these august waiters? It was a mystery to her. And the ladies wore such lovely clothes! Was the Major not ashamed to be seen with such a scarecrow as herself? On the contrary, the Major was delighted to be seen with such a pretty girl.

The splendid shops, the elegant streets...Amused and touched by her enthusiasm, the Major found himself seeing London with new and less world-weary eyes. It was perfectly true, London could be an exciting place if one allowed oneself to notice it. In the evening after dinner they sat and talked in front of a blazing fire. For a while they discussed Kilnalough. The Major had been hoping to hear more of the Majestic, but Sarah had nothing to add to her letters. Ripon and Máire were married now and living in Rathmines, but she knew no more than that. She thought that Edward and Ripon were having no more to do with each other. There’d been some terrible rows but she didn’t know the details. She’d hardly seen Edward for ages, she added, gazing into the glowing embers. And then she grimaced and said that she didn’t want to talk about Kilnalough, she wanted the Major to tell her about himself. And so the Major, feeling strangely at peace, found himself talking about the war. Little by little, random names and faces began to come back to him. He told Sarah first about one or two curious things that had happened: about a young Tommy who had been found dead in his bunk and the only thing they had been able to find wrong with him was a broken finger; about the shouted friendly conversations with the Germans across No-Man’s-Land; about a man in the Major’s regiment who had had his leg blown off and had sat in a shell-crater tying up the arteries by himself and had survived...And soon the Major was telling Sarah about incidents that until now had been frozen into a block of ice in his mind. In the warmth of her sympathy he found he could talk about things which until now he had scarcely been able to repeat to himself. A little drunk and tired, sitting there in the flickering firelight, the bubble of bitterness in his mind slowly dissolved and tears at last began to run down his cheeks for all his dead friends.

The following morning Sarah left for France. She would send the Major her address, she said.

The Major had written to Sarah an enormous letter, crammed with confidences, packed with poetic observations on life and love and every other subject under the sun. He had at last found someone to talk to! He had found someone who understood him and shared his view of the workings of the world. Everything which for want of a listener he had been unable to say for the last four or five years came foaming out of his head in a torrent of blue-black ink, all at once. The leaves of writing-paper became so thick that they would no longer fit in an ordinary envelope and, besides, he had still more to say...by the time he had finished he would be obliged to wrap up his letter in a brown-paper parcel. Not that the Major was waiting to finish his letter exactly (because the kind of letter the Major was writing is seldom voluntarily finished before the Grim Reaper bids us lay down our pens); his difficulty was more practical than aesthetic: he was unable to send Sarah his letter in instalments because she had forgotten to send him her address. As time went by, as winter turned into spring, the Major became less and less hopeful that she would remember to rectify this oversight. His flood of confidences declined to a trickle and finally dried up altogether. The Major became gloomy and sensible once more. And the grey world returned to being as grey as it had always been. In due course his aunt died.

Meanwhile, in Ireland, the troubles ebbed and flowed, now better, now worse. He could make no sense of it. It was like putting out to sea in a small boat: with the running of the waves it is impossible to tell how far one has moved over the water; all one can do is to look back to see how far one has moved from land. So in the case of Ireland all one could do was to look back to the peaceful days before the war. And they already seemed a long way away.

* * *

INDIAN UNREST
Lord Hunter’s Inquiry

The Indian newspapers received by the Indian mail, says Reuter, contain further reports of the proceedings of the Hunter Commission which is inquiring into the Indian disorders of last year. On December 3rd Captain Doveton, who administered martial law at Kasur, in his evidence, while admitting that he did invent some minor punishments during the martial-law administration, punishments less severe in form than the usual martial-law sentences, denied that he ordered any persons to be whitewashed, or made people write on the ground with their noses...

Sir Chiman Lal Setalvad turned to the feeling of the people regarding martial law. “You say the people liked martial law?” he suggested.

“Very much so,” was the witness’s reply.

Sir C. Setalvad: “You say the people would have liked it to become practically permanent?” “That was the impression that was given.”

“Did the people actually tell you this—that the summary courts were things they liked?” “They liked people being tried by martial law, without any right of appeal. They preferred that to spending money on appeals.”

Questioned in regard to the story of women of loose character having been compelled to witness flogging sentences, witness said that it was a misrepresentation, although not a deliberate one...

Continuing, Captain Doveton said that as regards his order requiring convicted persons to touch the ground with their foreheads, he had heard of this being done before. He did not mean it to be debasing.

At this stage General Barrow, addressing Lord Hunter, suggested that witness was a young officer doing his duty to the best of his ability under rather trying conditions, but that he was not a criminal.

* * *

The Major returned to Kilnalough in the middle of May, expecting the worst. Since early in the year the number of violent incidents had steadily increased. An official return of “outrages” attributed to Sinn Fein had just been published and the Major had read it with apprehension: it listed the total number of murders for the first quarter of the year as thirty-six; of “firing at persons” eighty-one; three hundred and eighty-nine raids for arms had taken place, and there had been forty-seven incendiary fires. Tired from his journey and nervous in spite of the peaceful and familiar aspect of Kilnalough station, the Major started violently when a hand was put on his shoulder. He turned sharply to find the grinning and friendly face of the station-master, who wanted to inform him that Dr Ryan was waiting outside in his motor car and would give him a lift to the Majestic.

With Dr Ryan there was a youth of sixteen or seventeen with black hair and a pale, beautiful face. The doctor, his face almost totally obscured by a muffler and a wide-brimmed black hat, muttered an introduction. This was his grandson Padraig. They were going to tea at the Majestic, he added disagreeably, and Edward had asked them to...In short: “Get in, man, there’s plenty of room. We’ve been waiting long enough already.”

Soon the long, unkempt hedges of the Majestic were unreeling beside them; beyond lay the dense, damp woods. There was an air of desolation on this side of the road, a contrast with the loose stone walls and neatly ploughed fields on the other side. But a little farther on even the open fields degenerated; unploughed, the meadows empty of cattle, the potato fields abandoned to the weeds that devour the soil so voraciously in the damp climate of Ireland. By a gate leading into one of these fields a man wearing a ragged coat stood, motionless as a rock, his eyes on the ground. As they passed he did not even raise his eyes. What was the fellow doing standing motionless in an empty field, staring at the ground? the Major wondered.

Edward must have been watching for them, because hardly had they turned in a sweep of gravel and come to a halt by the statue of Queen Victoria before he was hastening down the steps to greet them. The Major was the first to alight. Edward gripped his hand tightly and pumped it vigorously, his mouth working but unable to utter a word except “My dear chap!” Then he turned away to the others.

Only as he greeted the doctor and his grandson did the Major have a chance to notice how much Edward had changed since their last meeting. His face had become much thinner and the contours of his skull more pronounced; in manner too he appeared strangely on edge, exaggeratedly cheerful and voluble now that the initial greetings were over, and yet at the same time weary and apprehensive as he set about extricating the old man from the front seat of the motor (Dr Ryan was tired also, it seemed, but his grandson proved as nimble as a gazelle). Edward, shoving and pulling with energy at the doctor’s feebly struggling limbs, cried that he had something to show his visitors, something that they couldn’t help but find delightful, something that was really outside the normal orbit of the Majestic, something that was, in fact, a new departure for himself as well as for the hotel and might, who knew?, turn out from a commercial point of view to be the foundation of something big...in a word, they should all come while it was still fine (if they didn’t mind waiting a few minutes before taking their tea) they should all come, before it started to rain, and see...his pigs.

The boy Padraig, who had allowed himself to look faintly interested at this extravagant preamble, pursed his lips gloomily and appeared to be unexcited by the prospect of viewing some pigs. As for Dr Ryan, he seemed positively annoyed (or perhaps he had not yet had time to recover from the indignity of being dragged out of his seat by the lapels). “Ah, pigs,” he muttered testily. “To be sure.” His heavy, wrinkled eyelids drooped.

The old spaniel, Rover, came up and sniffed the Major’s trouser-leg.

“See, he recognizes you,” exclaimed Edward cheerfully. “You recognize your old friend Brendan, don’t you, boy?”

The dog wagged its tail weakly and, as they set off, plodded after them, the long hairs of its stomach matted with dried mud.

As they turned the corner of the house a long bloodcurdling shriek ripped through the silence.

“What on earth...?”

“The peacocks,” explained Edward. “Normally they only cry at dusk or after nightfall. I wonder what’s got into them.”

Dr Ryan said querulously: “It’s going to pour again any minute.”

“And where are they, the peacocks?” Padraig wanted to know. “Could I have some feathers off of them?”

“Of course. Remind me after tea.”

The Major looked out over the sea to where a black, massive cloud-formation was swelling towards them from over the invisible Welsh coast. It was going to pour. “They have beautiful feathers, those birds,” he mused aloud. “Why should they shriek like that?”

The land on this side of the hotel, Edward was explaining to Padraig with the old man limping along morosely a few paces behind them, was where the guests had diverted themselves in the old days. Was it not splendidly suited for the purpose? Look at the way it dropped in a series of wide terraces towards the sea. Each terrace had been reserved for a different recreation. This flat green meadow through which they were now passing had been reserved for clock-golf and bowls; the one below for lawn tennis, a dozen separate courts, each one of fine quality and, like the hard courts round by the garages, angled so that the westering sun would never shine into the eyes of the server...and it worked, assuming, of course, that none of the guests were stricken by an irrational craving to get up and take some exercise before, say, half eleven in the morning (but few, if any of them, Edward added with a sour chuckle, had ever been greatly discomfited by the rising sun, or so he understood). The soil for these courts, the draining system and the grass lawn itself had been imported from England, installed specially and with enormous care in order to emulate the heavenly growth that cloaked the courts at Wimbledon. Edward might have gone on with his explanation but at this moment Padraig spotted a peacock sitting on the broken wall that snaked down from one terrace to another, protecting them from the north wind. As he skipped over to investigate, Edward muttered: “A fine lad, Doctor, a fine lad.” But the surly old doctor merely grunted disagreeably, refusing to be mollified.

Padraig returned and together they descended a wide and imposing flight of stone steps lined at intervals with cracked urns bearing coats of arms but containing nothing more regal than a few tufts of grass, thistles, and in one of them what appeared to be a potato plant. Between the stone steps green whiskers sprouted unchecked in every crack and crevice. On the next terrace a young man stood smiling cheerfully out to sea. At the sound of footsteps he turned and, smiling down at the earth, went through the motions of digging with the spade he was holding.

“Ah there, Seán,” Edward called to him.

“Good day, sor.”

The Major noted with surprise that the foot which had come to rest, after one or two token digging motions, on the shoulder of the spade was shod in a gleaming shoe, the trouser-leg above it was neatly creased, and thrown over the young man’s shoulders and knotted round his neck was what looked like a Trinity cricket sweater.

“I say, Edward, you have a very well-turned-out gardener.”

But Edward was busy telling Padraig (who showed no sign of being interested) that the land here was ill-suited to the growing of potatoes: the soil contained a good deal of clay and held the moisture so that if it rained too copiously the potatoes would rot in the ground, likely as not, before they could be dug up and eaten. Taking this fact into account it would appear to have been a mistake to dig up the tennis courts (for, in an effort to make the land pay, one or two had been dug up). True, the ones that had been left had forgotten their aristocratic origins and “gone Irish,” the delicate grass becoming thick and succulent in the damp climate, more suitable for feeding cows than hitting forehand drives off. Not that it mattered very much since the twins (“my two little girls... about your age”) didn’t seem to care very much for the game.

“Do you play tennis?”

Padraig, after his moment of enthusiasm for the peacocks, had become sullen once more. “Indeed I do not.” Padraig hated all games; he stated as much in a loud and satisfied tone. Particularly games which involved contact with other people’s bodies.

“But tennis...” began Edward.

Having arrived at the lowest terrace, against which the sea lapped in chilly grey waves, they turned to the right, following a gravel path along the water’s edge. This path was lined by monstrously unclipped privet hedges and ended at a boat-house complete with slipway and the half-exposed rotting ribs of what had once been a large yacht; built against the boat-house was a taller square building which Edward said was the squash court. (And what, Padraig wanted to know, was a “squash” court when it was at home? It sounded mighty unpleasant whatever it was.) It was in the squash court that Edward apparently kept his pigs. He opened the door and went inside, making cooing noises. Padraig, wrinkling his nose, followed. Dr Ryan heaved a sigh and turned his ancient, lined features to the Major.

“Ach, it’s a long way for a man of eighty to walk with no tea inside him.”

Before following him inside the Major turned to look back at the hotel, which at this point was much nearer; the ground fell away sharply and one crenellated wing of it hung almost directly above. Edward’s voice from inside the squash court was calling him to have a look at his beauties, his three remarkable piglets. The building consisted of a small ante-chamber and an enormous oblong room with peeling white walls and a rotting wooden floor. The roof was of greenish glass that filled the place with a murky submarine light. In addition, Edward had lit two hurricane lanterns which hung from great metal arms riveted into the walls; the light from these poured down on mounds of straw, mud, excrement and pig-swill. The stench was intolerable.

Three piglets, glowing pink in the cascade of light from the lanterns, frisked around Edward, who was kneeling on a pile of steaming straw and doing his best to tickle their stomachs, though they were in such an ecstasy of excitement that they could hardly hold still for a moment, nipping and suckling at his fingers and tumbling over his shoes.

“Look at them, did you ever see such wonderful little fellows in all your life? Here now, calm down a bit and show your visitors how well you can behave. Here, Brendan, this is Mooney, that’s Johnston, and the one sniffing at your sock is O’Brien. We feed them mostly with stale cakes from the bakery, you see...ones that haven’t been sold. We get a couple of sacks sent down from Dublin on the train once a week: iced cakes, barm bracks, Swiss rolls, oh everything! lemon sponges, almond rings, currant buns, Battenbergs, Madeira cake...A lot of them are so fresh you wouldn’t mind eating them yourself.” And Edward gazed down with tenderness at the plump pink animals that were still whirling and somersaulting about his feet before turning to the Major for corroboration.

The Major cleared his throat for a favourable comment on the piglets. But he was silenced by a growl and an ear-splitting squeal. It was Rover, of course, who had followed them into the squash court undetected. For a few moments there was chaos while the other two pigs joined in the squealing and Edward tried to soothe them. The piglet Mooney, unaware that any creature on earth might wish him ill and perhaps thinking that the old spaniel was merely a somewhat hairy brother-pig, had playfully performed a somersault which had landed him within range of the dog’s sharp teeth. A painful nip had been administered. For a moment the piercing noise, the grovelling figure of Edward, the swaying lanterns and the asphyxiating ammoniac stench all combined with weariness from his journey to make the Major wonder whether his reason had not become unhinged.

He poked his head out of the door and took a deep breath of cool, unscented air. The relief was extraordinary. There was the sound of footsteps. A buxom girl wearing an apron was skipping towards them along the path.

“The master?” she called. “Is he there? A gentleman does be at the door.” The Major nodded and re-entered the building to tell Edward that he was wanted. The piglets had calmed down and were lying in a row on their backs having their stomachs rubbed. Getting to his feet with a grimace of annoyance, Edward said: “Look here, why don’t you have a good look at the pigs and then follow me up to the house for a spot of tea when you’ve finished? See you up there in a few minutes.” With that he hurried out. A moment later he returned to say: “By the way, would you mind dousing the lanterns before you leave?” Then he was gone again.

Dr Ryan and the Major exchanged a glance but said nothing. Padraig made a sour face and began to wipe one of his boots with a clean handful of straw. The three piglets, gradually becoming aware that the flow of pleasure over their fat pink stomachs had been interrupted, rolled over and sat up. Their three visitors stared at them grimly until, one by one, the animals crept away to a heap of oozing mud and straw in the farthest corner of the court and settled themselves with their backs to the strip of tin. From there they eyed with suspicion and alarm the hostile creatures who (in appearance, anyway) so much resembled their beloved Edward.

When he judged that they had gazed at the animals for a suitable interval the Major doused the lights (which turned the piglets as grey as rats) and ushered the doctor and his grandson out into the fresh air. The old gentleman looked very weary indeed now and his movements had become more trembling and tentative than ever. They began to climb in silence towards the looming house, with the old man leaning heavily on his grandson’s slim shoulder and thrusting at the ground with his stick. “Really,” thought the Major, “it was most inconsiderate of Edward to bring the ‘senile old codger’ all the way down here for this pig nonsense.”

On a flight of stone steps between two terraces they stopped for a rest. They had gained sufficient altitude to afford the Major a view over the strip of park-land to the south-west, and beyond to the meadow. From the next terrace up, or from the one above that, he should be able to see clear to the tenants’ farms and the rolling hills behind them. The farmhouses—he remembered them perfectly—would be clustered there on the green slopes looking, at this distance, like grey sugar cubes.

They were now taking a short cut across the penulti-mate terrace, which led them past an immense swimming-pool, a splendid-looking affair which for some reason the Major had never noticed before. Here and there bright blue tiles were visible through the green lichen that veiled its sides and they passed the peeling white skeleton of a high-diving-board; beside it a springboard hung over the black water on the surface of which, by accident or design, lay the green discs of water-lilies. “It must be fresh water,” he thought. “Rainwater, perhaps.”

As he watched, something heaved powerfully beneath the surface. “Looks as if there might be good fishing. Pike, I wouldn’t be surprised. Too bad Edward hasn’t got a decent cook.”

Turning a corner of the pool brought a reflection of the sky down on to the water for a moment and left the water-lilies floating in azure. He glanced back once more to see if any fish were rising, but the surface was glassy smooth. He was tempted to go back and try the springboard to see whether it had rotted through—but undoubtedly it had. And it was fitting that it should have. From here the fashionable young men, his erstwhile comrades in arms, had taken one, two, three steps, a jump, and jack-knifed into the azure. There was something moving about this remnant of a happy youth; the Major, at any rate, felt moved.

But at last they were on the final flight of steps and soon they would be sitting in armchairs drinking tea.

“We’ve scaled the Matterhorn, Doctor!” But the old man, head and shoulders bowed forward on to his chest, was too spent to reply.

The Major looked towards the meadow and sure enough the farmhouses were scattered like grey sugar cubes on the rolling, quilted fields. Much nearer, though (indeed, near enough to have been visible from the lower terrace if he had looked more carefully), not far from the wall of loose, flat stones which divided the park from the meadow, a man in a tattered overcoat was standing motionless, facing towards the Majestic but with his eyes on the ground. The Major wondered whether it was the same man he had noticed earlier and, as they went inside and their footsteps echoed beneath the great glass dome of the ballroom, the incongruous but disturbing thought occurred to him that perhaps this man also would not object to sharing some almost-fresh cakes with Edward’s piglets. Before going off to wash and change his shirt he told Edward that there was some fellow hanging around in the meadow and Murphy was dispatched to tell the chap to buzz off. It was probably that bane of all respectable folk in Ireland, a tinker.

On an impulse he went inside. It was very dark. The heavy curtains were still half-drawn as he had left them six months earlier, only allowing the faintest glimmer of light to penetrate. The bottles and glasses on the bar glowed in the shadows; there was a strong smell of cats and some silent movement in the darkness. Looking up, he was taken aback for a moment to see a pair of disembodied yellowish eyes glaring down at him from the ceiling. It was only when he had moved to the window to draw back the curtains that he realized that the room was boiling with cats.

They were everywhere he looked; nervously patrolling the carpet in every direction; piled together in easy chairs to form random masses of fur; curled up individually on the bar stools. They picked their way daintily between the bottles and glasses. Pointed timorous heads peered out at him from beneath chairs, tables and any other object capable of giving refuge. There was even a massive marmalade animal crouching high above him, piloting the spreading antlers of a stag’s head fixed to the wall (this must be the owner of the glaring yellow eyes that had startled him a moment ago). He had a moment of revulsion at this furry multitude before the room abruptly dissolved in a shattering percussion of sneezes. A fine grey cascade of dust descended slowly around him. “Well, I’ll be damned, where the devil did this lot come from? All the cats in Kilnalough must be using the Majestic to breed in... and not all of them are wild either.” Indeed, led by the giant marmalade cat which from the stag’s brow had launched itself heavily into the air to land on the back of a chair and thence to slither to the floor, they were moving towards him making the most fearful noise. In a moment he was up to his shins in a seething carpet of fur.

He moved brusquely, however, and the animals scattered and watched him in fear. The smell had become nauseating. He tried to open the window but the wooden frame must have swollen with the dampness; it was wedged tight, immovable. He was about to leave when his eye fell on the envelope which lay on the bar. It was the letter from Angela which Edward had handed to him on the day of her funeral; his name was written on the envelope in the precise handwriting which had once been so familiar. He thought of it lying here, Angela’s final message to him, through the long months he had been away, the cats multiplying around it, the seasons revolving. Uneasily he opened it...but he did not read it. It was much too long. He put it in his pocket and picked his way sadly through the cats to the door.

In the Palm Court the Major was greeted by Edward with a fresh burst of enthusiasm, as if the few minutes which had elapsed had been yet another long separation. No sooner had the Major forced his way through the new and astonishing growth of bamboo that threatened to occlude the entrance entirely (for here too the seasons had continued to revolve) when Edward was on his feet calling: “Here he is, the man himself. Come here, Brendan, and explain why you haven’t been keeping in touch with us all this time...Eh? Let’s hear his excuses, what! Damned if the fellow hasn’t been too busy chasing the ladies to give his old friends a thought. Doctor, what d’you think? What d’you make of a friend who won’t write letters, poor sort of a chap, isn’t he? And I’m dashed if he hasn’t put on weight into the bargain. A bit of riding is what he needs, I should think, and a few early mornings out with a gun and a dog...How does that sound to you, Brendan? Not so bad, eh? I thought you’d get tired of being citified sooner or later. Now then, come and tell us all your news, old man. Sit here so we can have a look at you. Yes, that one looks solid enough...pull it up a bit and I’ll do the honours. Och, yes, I have to do it all m’self these days, I’m turning into an old woman so I am, a real old woman. We started. You don’t mind, do you? Thought we wouldn’t wait for the tea to get cold...”

While the Major sipped his tea and peered curiously around at his scarcely familiar surroundings Edward fired questions at him, flitting from one subject to another, as often as not without waiting for replies. Such was his state of excitement that he could scarcely keep still. Indeed, he kept jumping to his feet to make unnecessary adjustments to the table.

“What was Ascot like last year?” he would cry gaily, handing everyone an extra teaspoon. “You must have been there ...now don’t tell me you weren’t. Yes? Yes? No, wait a minute, try a fill of this and see how you like it. I got the man in Fox’s to make it up specially...a special blend, my own concoction, thought I’d try it out on you, see how you like it. No, wait, have a slice of cake first. Bewley’s. They say it’s very good, don’t know much about cake m’self, but they say it’s a good one...Did I tell you I’d taken up science again? Have to keep the old brain from getting rusty, don’t we? Body and mind. Body and mind. Body and soul, as Sammy would tell you. Never had any time for Ascot, Brendan. Ascot is for the ladies, m’father used to say, the men just stand there like stuffed parrots. Give me a good point-to-point any day where there’s none of that nonsense. Used to let poor Angie and her mother bully me into it sometimes. (Poor Angela, echoed the Major in his thoughts, feeling a remote ache of compassion from the folded wad of paper in his breast pocket.) Didn’t care for it, though...Now, young man, what’ll you have? Another slice of cake to put some muscle on you, eh? And you, Doctor? More tea? Now, Brendan, frankly I don’t know what this country is coming to...Have they gone mad over there in London? You tell us, you’ve just come from there...have they gone mad or what? The bloody Shinners are getting away with murder. Land-grabbing is the latest. Pious articles in the papers about what they call ‘land-hunger in the west’ and d’you know what it is? They’re forcing chaps to sign over their land at gunpoint for a pittance...”

“Don’t be a damn fool, Edward!” the doctor said distinctly.

“There, you see, Brendan,” Edward went on grimly. “You see what I mean. The good doctor and I have been having words about this already. D’you know that they’ve even been trying it on with me?” And leaping to his feet once again Edward seized a bread-knife and began to slash away at the foliage with it as if it were a machete. And it was true that the growth of ferns, creepers, rubber-plants and God only knew what had become so luxuriant as to be altogether beyond a joke. Whereas previously the majority of the chairs and tables had been available, here and there, in clearings joined by a network of trails, now all but a few of them had been engulfed by the advancing green tide. While Edward slashed away with the bread-knife the Major, anxious to change the subject, observed politely that he had never in his life seen indoor plants “succeed” so well. Edward, his exuberance subsiding abruptly, murmured something indistinct about the system of irrigation, then something further about sewage and the septic tank. “A devil’s own job” something would be “and frankly the expense...” With a sigh he kicked the slashed leaves and twigs into a pile beside the table and slumped back into his chair.

“And anyway, what does it matter in the long run?” the Major understood him to murmur very softly, eyes raised, mouth open, to the great skylight above them, itself almost obliterated by vegetation. Rover, who had been dozing with his chin on the Major’s instep, went over to inspect the pile of leaves, lifted a leg to sprinkle them with a few drops of urine before, inertia overcoming him, he rolled over on to his side to doze off once more.

There was a long silence as they sat there in the green-ish gloom. The old man was motionless, deeply sunk in an armchair just as the Major remembered him from his first visit and, for all one knew, fast asleep behind the drooping lids. The Major noted with dismay that the doctor’s flies were undone; a fold of flannel was protruding like the stuffing from a broken doll. Really! someone should have reminded the poor old fellow; at his age one couldn’t be blamed for such a lapse. And why had nobody thought of removing his hat? He looked absurd sitting there at the tea-table wearing a hat (though it was true that the foliage made one feel as if one were out of doors).

“You said I could have some peacock feathers,” Padraig said plaintively, but Edward made no reply and silence fell once more.

A faint rustling sound became audible, as of someone making his way with caution along one of the trails through the thicket. There had previously been a way through, the Major remembered, from one end of the Palm Court to the other (leading to a spiral staircase down into the cellars). It seemed, to judge by the steadily approaching rustle of leaves, that against all probability this trail was still practicable. The noise of movement stopped for a moment near at hand, and there was a deep sigh, a long exhalation of breath, almost a sob. Then the noise started again. In a moment whoever it was would step into view from behind an extraordinarily powerful tropical shrub which seemed to have drilled its roots right through the tiles of the floor into the oozing darkness below. No sound but for the rustling footsteps. Even the doctor appeared to have stopped breathing. The Major tried to see past the hairy, curving, reticulated trunk of this tree, to distinguish (between succulent, oily leaves as big as dinner-plates) the tiny figure that slowly shuffled into sight. It was old Mrs Rappaport.

She stopped in the clearing opposite the tea-table and turned her sightless eyes in their direction.

“Edward!”

Edward said nothing but continued to sit there as if made of stone.

“Edward, I know you’re there,” the old lady repeated shrilly. “Edward!”

Edward looked agonized but said nothing. After a long pause the old lady turned and began to move forward again. For what seemed an age they listened to the decreasing rustle of her progress followed by a prolonged wrestling with the grove of bamboo shoots. Listening to the interminable thrashing as she tried to escape from the toils of bamboo, the Major wondered whether he should go to her assistance. But at last the thrashing stopped. Mrs Rappaport had won through into the residents’ lounge.

Silence returned and it seemed to the Major that the greenish gloom had deepened into an intolerable darkness. If only the famous “Do More” generator had been working they could have repulsed this aqueous darkness with a cleansing flood of electric light. He looked round for the tall-stemmed lamp which Angela had once switched on in this very glade, but although it was no doubt still somewhere near at hand (few things being ever deliberately changed at the Majestic) there was no longer any way of telling which of these leafy shrubs possessed a tubular metal trunk and glass corolla.

“Have you had enough to eat, old chap?”

“Eh?” said the Major.

Edward was talking to the dog, however. After a moment, though, as if the sound of his own voice had startled him into activity, he stirred uncomfortably and looked at his guests. He stood up for an instant, without pushing his chair back, then sat down again.

“Glad to hear you’re something of a sportsman,” he said to Padraig with an effort. “Good for a young fellow...cricket, hockey and so forth. Mind you, I was never much of a cricketer myself...Too impatient with it all, I suppose.”

“I hate cricket,” Padraig said sullenly.

Whether or not this exchange served to clear the air, Dr Ryan now also began to speak, though so softly that it was all the Major could do to make out what he was saying. Several moments passed before he realized that the old fellow had begun to speak hoarsely, comfortingly, consolingly to Edward of someone who had died...and several more moments before he realized that that someone was Angela, as if she had only been dead for a matter of hours rather than months.

People are insubstantial, he understood the old man to be saying, a doctor should know that better than anyone. They are with us for a while and then they disappear and there is nothing to be done about it...A man must not let himself become bitter and defeated because of this state of affairs, because really there is no point to it...There is no rock of ages cleft for anyone and one must accept the fact that a person (“You too, Edward, and the Major, and this young boy as well”)...a person is only a very temporary and makeshift affair, as is the love one has for him...And so Edward must understand that this young girl who had just died, his beloved daughter Angela whom he, Dr Ryan, had assisted into the world, even at the height of her youth and health was temporary and insubstantial because...people are insubstan-tial. They really do not ever last...They never last. A doctor should know. People never last.

Edward laughed heartily and, lighting a candle, said: “I remember one time some fellows in Trinity asked me to bowl in the practice nets with them (used to like to keep myself in trim during the vacations) and I’m damned if I didn’t have such a swelled head in those days that I made up some cock-and-bull story about being a demon bowler. Well, they had the nets up against the wall, of course. First ball I bowled (fella called Moore was batting, later played for the Gentlemen of Ireland), first ball, mind you, I’m dashed if it didn’t sail clean over the batsman, over the back of the net, over the wall, bounced on the roof of a carriage in Nassau Street and went half-way up Dawson Street! Eh? What? How about that for a piece of bowling, eh? You can bet my face was like a beetroot and, by Jove, did they laugh at me...Och, after that I stuck to the gloves, I can tell you.” Bubbling with mirth Edward gradually subsided once more.

On an impulse the Major had slipped Angela’s letter out of his pocket and (overcome by curiosity and a vague dread as to what it might contain) was straining his eyes in the candle-lit gloom to read it, while the doctor began a rambling and incoherent monologue about there being a new spirit in Ireland (it was clear that the old chap was so exhausted and his mind so fogged that he no longer knew where he was or what he was talking about).

Ah, it was as he thought, Dearest Brendan—the regular handwriting, line after line like small waves relentlessly lapping a gentle shore. On my dressing-table—the mirror, the brushes, the jewellery-cases, even a photograph of himself. From the window of my bedroom I can see...but what could she see? Only two elms and an oak, reputed to be a hundred and fifty years old, the second or third oldest tree on the estate, the edge of a path where the dogs sometimes wandered, but at this distance she could hardly recognize them...Foch or Fritz? Collie or Flash? They were too far away, in a sense (thought the Major) they were too particular now...only a generality like the circling of the planets could hold her attention now. But at twelve minutes past eleven the doctor came and he and Angela had a long chat which, for all that, didn’t prevent her noticing and recording that one of his waistcoat buttons was dangling by a thread and that there was a copious spot of what was undoubtedly porridge on his jacket...(Meanwhile the doctor muttered in the querulous tones of a tired old man: “There’s a new spirit in Ireland; I can feel it, you know, and see it everywhere. The British are finished here. The issue is no longer in doubt, hasn’t been for the last twenty years. There’s nothing now except a huge army that’ll keep Ireland under the British yoke. If you take my advice, Edward, you’ll give in gracefully now while you still can, you’ll give them the land they’re asking for, because, if you don’t, they’ll take it anyway...Parnell was the last man who could have preserved some sort of life for the British in Ireland but the damn fools didn’t realize it, thought he was their enemy! Serves ’em right. I’ve no sympathy for them, they’ve lived here for generations like cocks in pastry without a thought for the sufferings of the people. Now it’s their turn and I’ll shed no tears for them...Ach, things have changed since I was a boy...they have a different look to them, the people, it would take a fool not to see it.”)

“But this is an enormous letter,” thought the Major, appalled, hefting the wad of crinkly paper in his hand. “It would take a prodigious effort even to write such a letter if one were weakened by illness, if one were unable to take proper nourishment (he thought with a pang of the untouched trays of food ferried up and down the stairs) and...and the detail in it is intolerable.”

(“Of course, I was a child then, too young to remember those days, but my father had seen it and my uncles too, God rest them, they were old men before thirty with the worry and the trouble...and I remember the way people talked of it, you know. It must be God’s will, they’d say. He sent it to punish us, d’ye see? so what is there for a man to do? Sure we’ll have to go to another country, says he, to America on a ship because in Ireland we’ll never do any good; we’ll die for sure and there’ll be no help for it...Man, I’d say, what need is there to leave? The hunger is over and there’s food enough. But sure it’ll come again, says he, you’d never know...’tis best to leave Ireland. B’the Lord Harry, in those days they were leaving so quick they were even starving there on the quays of New York. There’s no luck in Ireland, they’d tell you...”)

“There’s no luck in Ireland,” agreed Edward, winking at the Major, who was thinking: “Such detail is intolerable,”—the design of the carpet over which the shrinking white feet of the patient still continued to patter day after day, morning and evening, to perform her ablutions...till the day inevitably came (he had been waiting for it with despair), till the page inevitably came when the pitcher and the bowl and the sponge came to her over the carpet and the carpet dropped out of her world and she too prepared to drop out of her world. “Such detail is quite obviously intolerable,” thought the Major as Edward reached out in the gloom to feel whether the teapot’s plump belly was still warm, at the same time absent-mindedly handing the sugar-bowl to the doctor, who did not need it and was muttering incoherent words to the effect that if Edward or anyone else laughed at what he was saying it was because he or they, was or were, British black-guards and fools (some part of the Major’s brain had remained on duty to straighten out the grammar while he thought: “Really, when I arrived and attempted to kiss her hand she flinched away from me as she might have flinched from some uncouth stranger.”).

“Those were the days,” declared Edward absently, perhaps still thinking of the day he had bowled a cricket-ball up Dawson Street.

“They certainly were not!” snapped the doctor.

So why should she write all this? Page after page to someone she scarcely knew. The relentlessly regular handwriting lapped rhythmically on. Only on the last few pages did it begin to waver a little.

I shall not die now.

Brendan, if I die who will look after you when I am gone?

And there were a number of other observations, feebly scratched out, which the Major had not the heart to decipher.

“People are insubstantial,” murmured the doctor, as his bowler-hatted head drooped sleepily on to his chest. “They never last. Of course, it makes no difference in the long run.”

It was signed, without the usual qualification about the “loving fiancée,” quite simply: Angela.

“The old chap’s fallen asleep,” Edward said. “Such a lot of rot he talks...I’m afraid he’s becoming a bit you-know-what.”

Getting to his feet he shouted deafeningly to Murphy to bring more candles because it had become infernally dark. The Major returned the letter to his pocket. Glancing down, he noted with dismay that his own flies were undone. He fumbled with them hastily before Murphy arrived with more candles.

“Can I have some peacock feathers?” demanded Padraig stubbornly. “You promised.”

“Of course, of course,” Edward told him genially. “Look, why don’t you go and ask the twins for some; I’m sure they have lots of that sort of thing. Murphy, show this young man where he can find the girls.”

When Padraig had departed with Murphy the Major asked: “What are the twins doing at home? Shouldn’t they be at school?”

“They were sent home,” replied Edward sombrely. “A spot of bother at school.” He sighed but did not elaborate.

They waited in silence for Padraig to return. Presently they heard the thrashing and rustling of his advent. A few moments later he appeared out of the darkness. The Major stared at him. His face was flushed and indignant and he seemed close to tears. His hair had been ruffled and his shirt was hanging out at the back. In one hand he clutched a bunch of peacock feathers.

Edward looked at him with concern, seemed about to say something but changed his mind. At length he sighed again and said that he thought it was about time to wake the doctor and send him home.

Before leaving, the doctor, who had been restored by his brief nap and now remembered why he had come, said: “For the last time, Edward, will you come to some arrangement with the farmers about the land, for your own good as much as for theirs?”

“So far I have received two threatening letters. Both of them I have given to the District Inspector. There happens to be a law in the land which protects a man’s private property and I have no intention of giving in to threats.”

“Is that your last word?”

“Yes,” Edward replied curtly.

* * *

LENIN AND POLAND
To be delivered from her Oppressors

The Paris Matin says: “A wireless message has been transmitted from Moscow announcing in glowing terms that the whole of Russia is rising to fight Poland. On May 6th the majority of the Moscow garrison of 120,000 men left the Soviet capital for the Dnieper front. Lenin and Trotsky addressed the troops. Lenin said: ‘We do not want to fight Poland but we are going to deliver her from her oppressors. Death to the Polish landlords! Long live the Polish Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic!’”

* * *

LAWLESSNESS NEAR KILKENNY
Ladies Terrorized by Armed Men

Late on Monday night considerable excitement was caused in Kilkenny by the news of the “hold up” at Troyswood a mile outside the city, by masked men armed with revolvers, of a number of motor cars and horsed carriages which were taking ladies and gentlemen, in whose number were included Major J.B. Loftus, D.L., J.P., Mount Loftus, and Sir Hercules Langrishe, Bart, Knocktopher Abbey, to a ball at the house of Captain J.E. St. George, R.M., Kilrush House, Freshford, about ten miles from Kilkenny City. A barricade of large stones was placed across the road.

Some of the cars did not pull up immediately when called upon to stop and several shots were discharged, but no one was injured, although some of the passengers say that the bullets whizzed very near them.

All the parties, who were in evening dress, were huddled together under a ditch while the destruction of the engines was carried out, and some of the ladies were very much frightened. Other horsed carriages came on the scene shortly afterwards and the raiders decamped, leaving their victims to get home as best they could.

Yesterday morning six motor cars were lined up on the side of the road, and the engines appeared to have been smashed with some heavy, blunt instrument. In the corner of the field where the drivers and passengers were placed there were remnants of chocolate boxes and cigarette packets.

* * *

Little had changed in Edward’s study since the Major had first seen it on his first day in Kilnalough when they had come to arm themselves against “the Shinner on the lawn.” There was the same solidly tangled mass of sporting equipment on the sofa. The drawer containing ammunition still lay on the floor, though the Persian cat (wisely disdaining the community in the Imperial Bar) had forsaken it for the superior comfort of an enormous greyish-white sweater that lay in one corner like a dead sheep. From under the window there came a steady creaking sound: the Major leaned out to investigate. In the yard below was a circle of brick surmounted by a huge horizontal cartwheel with worn wooden handles; against these handles two men were toiling, heads bowed with the exertion, round and round, straining like pit ponies.

“What on earth are they doing?”

“Pumping water up to the tanks on the roof. The other well by the kitchens is for drinking water, fills up from an underground spring. Lovely water...though for some reason it makes a weird cup of tea. You may have noticed, Brendan, that we sometimes get peculiar objects in the bath-water. Can’t be helped. One of the old ladies was complaining she had a dead tadpole the other day. Better than a live one, I suppose.” Without changing his tone he added: “Life has been hell these last few months.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about Ripon. I heard they were living in Rathmines.”

“Ripon is a wash-out,” Edward said bleakly. “I don’t want to hear his name mentioned again. It’s not that he took up with a Catholic girl, it’s not just that. I’m not so narrow-minded that I don’t know there are decent fellows among the Catholics in Ireland and plenty of ’em. I’d have put a stop to it if I could, of course, because mixed marriages don’t go down well in this country, with one lot or the other... Besides, I don’t want grandchildren of mine to be brought up believing all that unhealthy nonsense they teach them. All the same, if that’s what the boy had set his heart on I wouldn’t have stood in his way. He could have come to me and talked it over, man to man. He knew that. I may be an old fogey but I’m not a tyrant...” Edward paused and moodily looked at his watch. For a moment there was silence, then he said: “Come along to the lodge with me. There’s something I want to show you.”

They put on their hats and set off down the drive. The day was mild, overcast; although it had not been raining there was a smell of damp grass which the Major now always thought of as the smell of the Irish countryside.

“Ripon’s a wash-out,” Edward repeated. “I suppose everyone knew that except me. I suppose you realized it, Brendan, as soon as you set eyes on him...”

“Well, no,” murmured the Major diffidently, but Edward was not listening.

“Going behind my back and doing what he did...playing the cad with an innocent young girl (and a Catholic at that!), getting her in trouble as if she were a common housemaid, that’s something I’ll not stand for. He’s disgraced me and he’s disgraced his sisters.”

They walked on in silence. The Major could hear the dull continuous roar of the sea from somewhere behind the trees which were thickening into dense woods, matted with undergrowth and strung with brambles like trip-wires. They reached the end of the drive and the ruined lodge came into sight. Edward led the Major through some low bushes to the side of the building that faced the road. Here, high up on a part of the wall that had not been engulfed by ivy, a notice had been stuck.

“How d’you like that for cheek?”

The Major stepped forward to read it.

1. Whereas the spies and traitors known as the Royal Irish Constabulary are holding this country for the enemy, and whereas said spies and bloodhounds are conspiring with the enemy to bomb and bayonet and otherwise outrage a peaceful, law-abiding and liberty-loving people;

2. Wherefore we do hereby proclaim and suppress said spies and traitors, and do hereby solemnly warn prospective recruits that they join the R.I.C. at their own peril. All nations are agreed as to the fate of traitors. It has the sanction of God and man.

By order of the G.O.C.
Irish Republican Army

The Major had read of these posters in the newspapers but this was the first he had seen with his own eyes.

“The ruffians slip in during the night when they think they’re safe. Murphy should be here in a minute; I told him to bring along something to scrape it off with.”

“But what I don’t see,” said the Major with a smile, “is why they should think that ‘said spies and bloodhounds’ are anxious to conspire in your drive. After all, they could surely have found a more visible spot.”

“We have a few young chaps staying at the hotel at the moment,” Edward told him. “Ex-army officers brought over from England to give a hand to the R.I.C. They’re supposed to be the first of a new auxiliary force they’ve started recruiting. You won’t have seen them about yet, I expect, because I’ve quartered them in the Prince Consort wing by themselves. They didn’t get on with the old ladies. The Prince Consort wing is over the stables, can’t see it from here, of course. They have their own mess there and so forth. We had them in the main building at first but they were rather boisterous, just schoolboys, really (though they’ve done their bit, mind you, they’ve been in the trenches)...Trouble was they kept teasing the old girls; one of them kept on whipping out a bayonet and pretending to cut their throats...But they’re not a bad lot of chaps. Expect you’ll run into them round about. They use the tennis courts a bit. Ah, there’s Murphy.”

Murphy had appeared, carrying a hoe. Edward directed him to scrape off the notice and the old manservant advanced on the lodge feebly brandishing his implement. But the notice had been stuck well up on the wall and was out of his reach.

“We need something to stand on,” the Major said.

“Right you are,” said Edward. “Come here, Murphy. Major, you hand me the hoe and I’ll climb on Murphy’s shoulders.” He gave the hoe to the Major. “Come on, man, we haven’t got all day,” he added to the decrepit manservant, who was shuffling forward with every sign of reluctance. The Major looked dubiously at Murphy’s frail shoulders.

“Maybe we’d better get a ladder from somewhere.”

“Nonsense. Now hold still, Murphy. Hang on to the trunk of this tree while I’m getting up. For God’s sake, man, we’re never going to get anywhere if you’re going to wilt like that every time I touch you.”

But time and time again, just as Edward seemed on the point of throwing his glistening shoe and beautifully trousered leg over the old servant’s thin shoulders, he would begin to wilt in anticipation. Edward stormed at him for having no backbone and ordered him not to be so faint-hearted—all to no avail. In the end they had to leave the notice where it was. Edward stalked angrily up the drive. Murphy, relief written all over his cadaverous features, vanished into the trees. And the Major was left to his own devices.

He spent the afternoon in the company of the twins. There was a row going on between them and Edward; he did not know what it was all about but suspected it had something to do with their being sent home from school. In any event, Edward was taking a firm line with them (or so he told the Major). Any disobedience or lack of respect should be instantly reported to him and they would be dealt with. Part of their punishment, it seemed, was to spend the afternoon with the Major (who was offended by the idea); they were to go with him in the Daimler and show him the whereabouts of a remarkable trout stream. These days the Major was only faintly interested in fishing, but he had nothing better to do. Though Faith and Charity had a chastened air they looked remarkably pretty in their navy-blue dresses with white lace collars encircling their slender necks. The Major felt sorry for them.

“Which is which, and how can I tell?”

“I’m Charity and she’s Faith,” one of them said. “Faith is bigger there,” she added, pointing at Faith’s chest. Both girls smiled wanly.

Throughout the afternoon, as they motored through the low rolling hills, the twins sat on the back seat in attitudes of meek dejection, slim fingers lifted to entwine the braided velvet straps, each the mirror-image of the other. “What charming girls! Edward is being much too hard on them.”

He modified this opinion a day or two later, however. As an additional punishment a daily lesson with Evans, the tutor, had been ordained by Edward to take place in the writing-room. Passing the open door one afternoon, the Major paused to listen.

“How do you say in French, Mr Evans, ‘The buttons are falling off my jacket and I need a clean collar’?” one of the twins was asking innocently.

“How do you say, ‘I’ve got boils on my neck because I never wash it’?”

“How do you say, ‘I have ideas beyond my station’?”

“What does ‘amavi puellam’ mean?”

“How do you say in Latin, Mr Evans, ‘My pasty white face is blushing all over’?”

“Sharpen my pencil, Evans, ’fraid I’ve just broken it again.”

“Any more of this and I’ll report you to your father.”

“Any more of what? We’re only asking questions.”

“Aren’t we even allowed to ask questions?”

The Major moved on. He had heard enough.

Later that same afternoon, while taking a stroll with old Miss Johnston in the Chinese Garden (“If you ask me it’s an Irish Chinese Garden,” Miss Johnston said with a sniff, looking round at the thick beds of tangled weeds and seeded flowers), their path crossed that of a young man in khaki tunic, breeches and puttees, wearing on his head a tam o’shanter with the crowned-harp badge of the R.I.C. The Major’s eyes were drawn to the bandolier he wore across his chest and the black leather belt holding a bayonet scabbard; on his right thigh rested an open revolver holster. It was shocking, somehow, to meet this man in the peaceful wilderness of the garden, a sharp and unpleasant reminder of the incidents the Major had read about in the newspapers but could never quite visualize, any more than he could now visualize the shooting of the old man in Ballsbridge that he had witnessed. As they passed, the young man grinned sardonically and, winking at the Major, drew a finger across his throat from ear to ear.

“Gutter-snipe!” hissed Miss Johnston indignantly. “To think the R.I.C. is taking on young men like that!”

And it took all the Major’s considerate inquiries about her nephews, her nieces and the state of her health (“Chilblains even in midsummer in this hotel, Major. I’ve never known such draughts...”) to smooth her ruffled plumage.

And yet they were all ex-officers, these men, so Edward assured him later. One had to remember, though, that to be an officer in 1920 was not the same thing as being an officer in 1914. A lot of the older sort (their very qualities of bravery, steadfast obedience to the call of duty, chivalry and so forth acting as so many banana skins on the road to survival) had disappeared in the holocaust and had had to be replaced. It was also true that these new men, and the great number who would soon be following them to a meagre six weeks of police training at the Curragh, were among the least favourably placed of the countless demobilized officers who now found themselves having to earn a living once more. All the same, though one made allowances (and Edward was always ready to make allowances for men who had served in the trenches), there were limits. The old kind, the officer who was also a gentleman, would never have gone about frightening old ladies. So thought Edward. What did the Major think?

The Major agreed, but thought to himself that these “men from the trenches” who were being paid a pound a day to keep a few wild Irishmen in order might well have trouble taking anything very seriously—whether the Irish, the old ladies, or their own selves.

At the same time he was disturbed by their presence. These men (individually they were charming, Edward told him) were unpredictable and still estranged from the accepted standards of life in peacetime—not that one could call Ireland very peaceful these days. As he was passing the Prince Consort wing a day or two later a window exploded in a sparkling burst of splinters, a laughing head appeared and a hand was held out to see if it was raining. Occasionally too one heard pistol shots and laughter in the long summer evenings; Edward had laid out a pistol-range in the clearing behind the lodge where the I.R.A. notice had been posted. In no time at all the notice had melted away under a hail of bullets and hung in unrecognizable shreds. One day the Major picked up a dead rabbit on the edge of the lawn. Its body was riddled with bullets.

This rabbit, as it happened, had been a favourite of the Major’s. Old and fat, it had been partly tamed by the twins when they were small children. They had lost interest, of course, as they grew older, and no longer remembered to feed it. The rabbit, however, had not forgotten the halcyon days of carrots and dandelion leaves. Thinner and thinner as time went by, it had nevertheless continued to haunt the fringes of the wood like a forsaken lover. Poor rabbit! Moved and angry (but the “men from the trenches” were not to know that this was not a wild rabbit), the Major went to break the news to the twins, who were down by the tennis courts trying to persuade Seán Murphy to teach them how to drive the Standard (though Edward had forbidden this until they were older). The twins were not as upset as the Major expected them to be.

“Can we eat him?” they wanted to know.

“He’s already buried.”

“We could dig him up,” Faith suggested. “Aren’t rabbits’ feet supposed to be lucky?”

But the Major said he had forgotten where the grave was.

“Were the bullet-holes bad?”

“How d’you mean? They were bad for the rabbit.”

“No, I was just thinking we could have made a fur hat,” said Charity, “if there weren’t too many holes in him.”

“I say, Brendan, you aren’t any good at arithmetic, are you? Daddy has set that dreadful tutor person on us and now he’s threatening to look at our homework when it’s been corrected.”

“Try Mr Norton. He’s supposed to be good at that sort of thing.”

Mr Norton was a man in his seventies, a recent arrival at the Majestic; he had the reputation, fostered by himself, of having been a mathematical genius, drained in his youth, however, of energy and fortune by a weakness for beautiful women.

“We asked him...”

“But he always wants us to sit on his knee as if we were children.”

“And his breath smells horrid.”

Now that the Imperial Bar had been rendered uninhabitable by the colony of cats the Major sometimes took one of Edward’s motor cars into Kilnalough in the evening for a drink at the Golf Club. There one evening he met Boy O’Neill, the solicitor, who greeted him like an old friend, although it was almost a year since the Peace Day parade when they had last met. O’Neill’s appearance had changed dramatically and the Major could now scarcely recognize the timid, bony invalid he had first met at Angela’s tea-party. Dressed in a baggy tweed jacket with bulging pockets, O’Neill appeared more swollen and aggressive than ever. There was a subdued irritation about the man which made one ill at ease when talking to him; one had the feeling that O’Neill was capable at any moment of abandoning reason altogether and finishing the argument with an uppercut. The Major sat watching the wads of jaw-muscle thickening as he talked: he had just finished eighteen holes, he declared, and had never felt better in his life. A hot shower, a drink, and now he was off home for a good meal. He unslung the clinking golf-bag from his shoulder and heaved it into an armchair, showing no impatience to depart. Eyeing the golf-bag, the Major noticed nestling between a mashie niblick, a jigger and the bulging wooden head of a driver what he at first thought was a club without a head—but no, it was the barrel of a rifle.

“No half measures, eh?”

“I can see you haven’t been reading the papers, Major. Couple of army chaps were shot down on a links in Tipperary the other day...unarmed men. Didn’t have a chance out there with no shelter, nobody passing by. The Shinners are brave enough when the other fella doesn’t have a gun. They’ll run like rabbits if they know you’re armed.”

The Major only glanced at the newspaper these days, tired of trying to comprehend a situation which defied comprehension, a war without battles or trenches. Why should one bother with the details: the raids for arms, the shootings of policemen, the intimidations? What could one learn from the details of chaos? Every now and then, however, he would become aware with a feeling of shock that, for all its lack of pattern, the situation was different, and always a little worse.

Satisfied with the Major’s look of dismay, O’Neill was now saying confidently that there was no need to worry. “All this will be cleared up now within five or six weeks, you can take it from me.”

“How d’you know?” asked the Major hopefully, thinking that perhaps O’Neill had heard something. “Two reasons,” declared O’Neill. “One, reinforcements are coming from England with this new recruiting campaign. Two, because of the nature of the Irish people. The Irish are a quick-tempered lot but they don’t hold a grudge for long. They’re good at heart, you see. Besides, they’re too inefficient to get anywhere by themselves...I speak, mind you, of the Southerners; Ulstermen are a different kettle of fish. Besides, all Ireland’s best leaders have been Englishmen; look at Parnell.”

“Yes, yes, to be sure,” agreed the Major dubiously. “It must end soon. That’s what we used to say in the trenches,” he added with a faint smile.

“Of course, of course,” O’Neill said, failing to perceive the Major’s irony. “You can take my word for it. I’ve just been having a drink with the army lads we have here now and I don’t think they’ll stand for much nonsense from Paddy Pig.”

“You mean the men staying at the Majestic? I didn’t think they had much time for us locals.”

“They’re splendid chaps, you can take it from me,” replied O’Neill, who was now taking off his bulging jacket and showed less sign of leaving than ever. “It’s just that they don’t really know who they can trust over here and, frankly, I don’t blame them for that. Come in with me now to the bar and I’ll introduce you.”

“Really, thanks all the same...” protested the Major, but O’Neill was already on his feet and beckoning imperiously with a forearm as thick as a leg of lamb. The Major followed him reluctantly. O’Neill’s studded shoes clicked on the tiles of the corridor and bit into the worn wood of the locker room where a fat naked gentleman was vigorously towelling his quivering bottom. They passed through into the Members’ Bar.

“Just a minute,” the Major said. “There’s someone I must say hello to.”

Mr Devlin, dapper and smiling, was hastening towards him. He was delighted to see the Major back amongst them once more and must express his thanks for the kindness he had shown to his daughter Sarah on her way to France and how was the Major’s dear auntie who had also been so kind...(“Ah, deceased is she? Indeed now, I’m sorry to hear it.”) And was the Major himself in better health than he had been? It must have been a great worry and a terrible grief for him to be losing his auntie like that...And as for Sarah she would be back one of these days and he knew that she would look forward to seeing the Major as much as he himself did and besides they would probably be meeting here at the links from now on because he had “a little job to do”...He paused expectantly.

“Oh?”

Yes, he’d be spending some considerable time here in the evenings because he had been elected treasurer, there was a notice on the notice-board, the Major probably hadn’t had a chance to see it yet. “And it’s all thanks to the influence of a certain person who has been very good to me and my family, very good...I’ll say no more...it’s a great honour.”

The “men from the trenches,” four of them, were sitting together at the curve of the bar by a window looking out over the eighteenth green and the gently ascending slope of fairway that led up to it. None of the members, apart from O’Neill, were sitting near them, and for a good reason. They had caused some dismay, the Major had heard, by installing themselves here without invitation; after all, there was a lounge available for ladies and non-members (providing that they were respectable); the secretary had affably pointed this out on the occasion of their first visit. They had listened politely enough; there had not been a scene. But though there had not been a scene the trouble was that they had not moved either. The secretary’s smile had to some extent congealed on his lips but, as he explained to a special meeting of the committee, these fellows were, after all, over here risking their lives to maintain law and order in Ireland (not to mention the fact that they also happened to be armed to the teeth), so one did not want to deal too harshly with them, throw them out on their ears and so forth. The committee had pondered the problem and come up with a solution brilliant in its simplicity. The “men from the trenches” should be invited to become members. The secretary had been dispatched there and then, on the spot, to deliver this generous invitation...But he had returned almost immediately with the news that they had declined. Once more they had listened politely while he talked about members’ fees, rules, rights and obligations and then said, “No thanks.” It was preposterous, everyone agreed that it was. All the same, the objection to dealing harshly with them, the one about risking their lives to maintain law and order (as well as the other one), remained and one could not simply ignore it. In the end, after much discussion, a notice had been posted on the bulletin board announcing that all senior personnel of the R.I.C. had been declared honorary members for the duration of the emergency (one couldn’t, of course, open the doors to a horde of other ranks, splendid fellows though some of them no doubt were). The Major, who thought the secretary a pompous ass, had enjoyed this affair. But now that he saw the men sitting there, cold and calm, he had to admit that he would not like to have been the person with the job of ordering them to leave.

“Back again like a bad penny,” O’Neill was saying with chilling heartiness. “Want you to meet an old pal, Major Archer. Now I wonder if I can get this straight...Captain Bolton, Lieutenants...let me see, Pike, Berry, and Foster-Smith. How’s that for a memory, eh?”

“Sergeants now, old boy,” said Foster-Smith, whose prominent teeth and thinning hair gave him a foolish appearance; he was very slight, his breeches hung in folds from thighs that were no thicker than wine-bottles.

It was Pike whose head the Major had seen appearing through the broken window at the Majestic; he looked a jolly fellow, but the eyes above his plump blue cheeks showed a disturbing intelligence and his frequent laughter seemed perfunctory. Berry was younger than the others; his sandy hair was cut so short that it stood up like the bristles of a hairbrush.

“Bit of a comedown,” he was saying. “Not so much hobnobbing with officers now that we’ve joined the unwashed O.R.” He glanced slyly at the Major. Everyone laughed except Captain Bolton, who merely smiled faintly. O’Neill, red with mirth, laughed louder than anyone.

Captain Bolton’s eyes moved from one or other of the lieutenants to the Major in a detached, incurious way. There was something about his powerful jaw that was familiar to the Major; it was a moment before he realized what it was. These were the strong regular features (a face without any particular identity) which he had observed that sculptors frequently chose for war memorials. He could easily imagine Bolton frozen in bronze into some heroic posture. Put a helmet on his head, a bronze flag in his hand, drape a few dying bronze comrades around his knees...But Captain Bolton was very much alive and proved it by saying to the barman in a mild tone:

“Another round quick sharp, Paddy, you dirty Shinner, and put it on our account...”

“And send it to the King,” added Pike. “If he won’t pay send it to the Lord of Wipers.”

O’Neill explained the reason for introducing the Major to them: namely, the fact that they were neighbours. The Major too lived under Edward Spencer’s roof at the Majestic.

“Spencer has two lovely daughters,” Foster-Smith said, showing no interest in O’Neill’s information.

“I’ve got a lovely daughter too,” offered O’Neill winking broadly. “Want to see her picture?” And after a moment’s fumbling he produced a tattered photograph of Viola. While “the men from the trenches” were studying it O’Neill winked again, this time at the Major. The Major turned away. As he was leaving Bolton called after him: “Tell the old grannies that the next one we catch we’ll cut her up in pieces and put her in a sack.”

Laughter echoed after him as he made his way through the empty changing-room towards the lounge. Before he reached it O’Neill, who had hurried after him, took him by the arm and asked eagerly: “What d’you think of them? They’ll give the Shinners something to think about, won’t they?”

“I’m sure they will,” the Major said coldly. “But the cure may be as bad as the disease.”

When O’Neill had departed the Major wearily climbed the stairs to the tea-room on the first floor. It was empty at this hour, but there was a veranda with a splendid view over the links and beyond to the cornfields that lined the road to Valebridge. The sun was already low in the sky and black shadows crept far out into the flowing grass. Down below, by the club-house steps, four late arrivals were preparing to set out for the first tee, the breeze ballooning their plus-fours as they waited. There would still be time this evening for nine holes, or eighteen if one was not too particular about the fading light.

As they moved away from the club-house a great number of ragged men and boys materialized around them raising a piercing, pitiful clamour. Some of these tattered figures were so old and bent that they could scarcely hobble forward to press their claims, others mere boys who were scarcely bigger than the golf-bags they were hoping to carry. The golfers looked them over and made their selection. Those who had been rejected retired disconsolately to the shadows where they had been lurking. There was little hope now that another party would set out that evening.

The Major sighed, stretched, yawned and presently went home, disturbed that old men and children should have to hang around the club-house until late at night in the hope of earning a sixpence. He thought: “Really, something should be done about it.” But what could one do?

* * *

STATE OF IRELAND
A Conspiracy Against England

On the motion for the adjournment of the House of Commons yesterday, Sir Edward Carson said that he could not help thinking that the English and Scottish people—he hoped he was wrong—had begun not to care a spark what happened in Ireland. He imagined that a few years ago they could not have seen policemen serving their King shot down like dogs from day to day and soldiers who had fought their battles returning home to be treated like criminals because they had performed their heroic duties with very little being done for their protection. It was difficult to understand the paralysis that had come over the people of England in relation to these crimes. There was ample evidence that what was going on in Ireland was connected with what was going on in Egypt and India. It was all part of a scheme, openly stated, to reduce Great Britain to the single territory she occupied here, and to take from her all the keys of a great Empire. They would find, if they looked into it, that the same American-Irish who were working this matter in Ireland, and who visited Ireland last year, had an Irish Office, an Egyptian Office, and an Indian Office in New York. It was well known. It had been stated in the American papers that there was this great conspiracy going on—of which Sinn Fein formed only a part—not out of love for Ireland but out of hatred for Great Britain, fanned by Germans everywhere... He believed that the whole of this murder campaign, or a great part of it, was directed from America, and he believed the funds largely came from there.

* * *

GIRL’S HAIR CUT OFF
A New Way to Free Ireland

The outrage near Tuam when the hair was cut off Bridget Keegan by masked men who entered her father’s house in the early hours of the morning was strongly condemned by magistrates.

Mr Golding, C.S., who appeared for the Crown said it was a blackguardly act. Seven men entered the girl’s house about a quarter to one in the morning. One of them had a revolver and the others had what looked like revolvers. They took the girl, who had fainted, in her nightdress out to the yard, and cut her hair off with a shears, telling her sister, whom they threatened with the same fate, that that was what she got for going with Tommies. While the man with the shears was cutting off the hair he sang: “We are all out for Ireland free.”

All I can say is, said Mr Golding, God help Ireland if these are the acts of Irishmen, and God help Ireland if these are the men to free her.

* * *

LAND AGITATION MAINTAINED
Roman Catholic Bishop’s Appeal

The Most Rev. Dr O’Dea, Roman Catholic Bishop of Galway, preaching at Killanin, where he administered Confirmation, entreated the people to be calm and united, and above all to do everything in accordance with the rules of justice laid down by the Church, and the precepts of honesty which the Commandments require. With regard to shootings and outrages he would say little. Shootings were always dangerous, and even if shots were fired without any attempts to kill or wound, were they not threats? Did not the shots fired in the air threaten, and was not a threat sinful?

With regard to the taking over of land, continued his lordship, all I shall say is this: Let not the love of land, or riches, or anything else in this world, make us break God’s law, for land stained with God’s blood is unlawfully got, and is branded with God’s curse.

* * *

A day or two after the Major’s visit to the Golf Club Edward assembled his staff and what remained of his family to make an important announcement. The Major was also present, as were a number of the old ladies. Indeed, certain of the old ladies (particularly the Misses Bagley, Archer and Porteous) had lived at the Majestic for so long and in such penurious circumstances that somehow, since Edward no longer felt able to bring up the subject of payment of bills with them, they had metamorphosed themselves into members of the family. This situation was unsatisfactory for Edward who himself was no longer as wealthy as he had been. But one cannot turn a gentlewoman out into the streets to beg for her living. Besides, he found any discussion of money distasteful. As for baldly asking a lady to pay her bill, he would as soon have committed sodomy. His only resource, as the Major saw straight away, was to make their life so unpleasant that they might want to leave of their own accord. But naturally he was too much of a gentleman to do this deliberately, even though his expenses never seemed to stop mounting. In these circumstances it was probably a good thing that even at the best of times the discomfort of living at the Majestic was close to intolerable.

Edward’s gaze wandered absently around the room while he waited for everyone to assemble. Presently he stifled a yawn; he did not in the least look like someone about to make an important announcement. When at last a hush fell on the room he cleared his throat. He just wanted to say, he said, that he was on the point of—he paused a moment to let his words sink in—on the point of beginning an economy drive.

An “economy drive”? The old ladies flashed inquiring glances at each other, as if to say that they had been under the impression that this economy drive had already begun, indeed that it had already been going on for rather a long time. Some of the servants too betrayed signs of alarm: was this the end of their employment? So many people were out of work these days that it seemed more than likely that one day their turn would come. The cook, who had a houseful of drunken relations to support in one of the Dublin slums, gasped inaudibly; the massive façade of her bosom began to rise and fall rapidly. Evans turned pale and the boils on his neck glowed like cherries above the worn fringe of his stiff collar. Only one or two of the youngest maids who had barely arrived “from the country” blushed shyly and smiled their acceptance, as they would have even if Edward had decreed that they were to be whipped. As for Murphy, hitherto frozen into a cast-iron lethargy, his eyes were now racing to and fro across the carpet like terrified mice.

Edward cleared his throat. They expected him to continue, to amplify and explain...but no, he said nothing. The heavy ticking of the grandfather clock became audible. At length he sighed and asked: were there any questions?

Well, no, there were not. The air of dissatisfaction in the room deepened, however, and Miss Bagley looked quite cross. One really did not know where to begin with one’s ques-tions when such an outlandish idea as an “economy drive” was proposed. In the old days...Silence had fallen again. It was interrupted by old Mrs Rappaport, who was sitting straight-backed as ever in a rocking-chair by the empty fire-place, a lace cap pinned on her thin grey hair. She began to rock herself peevishly back and forth, faster and faster, until at last she cried: “It’s scandalous!” and everyone brightened a little.

But with Granny Rappaport one could never be quite sure whether she had altogether pinned down the subject under discussion or was talking about something totally different. Edward chose to ignore her and said that, all right then, that was all he had wanted to say and, by the way, thanked them for their co-operation. So they were dismissed...and still did not know at whose hard-won comforts the thin rats of economy were about to begin gnawing.

Edward, of course, was the sort of person for whom words and deeds are the same. Perhaps, the Major reflected, he would consider it sufficient to announce the economy drive without actually putting it into practice. That afternoon, however, while Edward and the Major were taking an after-lunch stroll on the terrace outside the ballroom, the twins were noticed fishing in the swimming-pool with an old tennis racket. They were brusquely summoned.

“Stand here and let’s see how tall you are. Oh, stand up straight, girl! D’you need clothes?”

“Yes, Daddy. Ours are all in flitters, mine especially.”

“Mine are worse.”

“Mine are ten times, twenty times, a hundred times—” Charity held up the darned elbow of her cardigan—“a million million times worse.”

“How long have you had the clothes you’ve got?”

“Absolutely ages.

“A billion years.”

“All right then, follow me. You come too, Major, and see fair play.”

Edward turned in through the grimy desert of the ball-room and they followed him across it and up an unfamiliar staircase, seldom used, to judge by the spiders’ webs which garnished the banister. As they climbed the twins pestered Edward with questions: what were these clothes? Had he been to Dublin to the shops? Was it Switzer’s, or Pim’s, or Brown Thomas’s, or what was it? How did he know their size and did he realize that Faith was a bit bigger in her bosom? Edward made no reply; he was short of breath and flushed. As they struck off down a corridor he murmured to the Major: “Getting old. Must take it easy these days.”

The twins had run ahead; every step they took raised a puff of dust from the carpet, so that their footprints appeared like smoke, glittering in the stripes of afternoon sunlight that filtered through half-open doors. Underfoot loose floorboards creaked and shifted ominously.

“If I get dry rot I’m done for,” Edward continued as if still discussing his health.

“Oh?”

“Bally place’ll fall about m’ears.”

One hundred and twenty-one, one hundred and twenty-two, one hundred and twenty-three...The next room had no brass number screwed to the door but once there had been one; its darker shadow remained on the varnished wood. It was at this door that Edward halted. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked it.

“In there?” exclaimed Charity, mystified. It was dark inside. Edward crossed to the window and threw open the closed shutters. Abruptly everything took on shape, colour and meaning. Although he had never been here before, everything he saw was perfectly familiar to the Major. He knew whose room this had been. His heart sank.

The twins had not been in here before. The room seemed to be occupied. They peered around curiously but already their excitement was melting into suspicion. They looked at the unmade bed, sheets and eiderdown roughly pulled up as if the chambermaid had not had time to make it properly. They wrinkled their noses at the pitcher and bowl, the sponge dried as hard as the pumice-stone beside it. They eyed their lovely reflections in the mirror and looked at the dressing-table with its silver hairbrushes and the silver frame containing a photograph of, well...the truth had dawned on them now but for a moment they were speechless with disbelief.

“Now let’s see...where...?” Edward said quietly. As he spoke the Major glimpsed a shadow of pain, as if he had been hurt behind the eyes (but why did he have to bring me? he wondered bitterly). Edward stepped over to the wardrobe and opened it experimentally. It was empty. A large white moth flew wearily out for a little way until it vanished from the air under a vicious downward smash of Faith’s tennis racket. A puff of powder from its wings hung in the room.

“Daddy, how could you?” cried Charity. “You surely don’t mean us to wear Angela’s things!” Edward said nothing, but his face darkened as he turned away and looked round the room. His eye came to rest on a chest of dark polished oak which, to the Major’s excited imagination, looked remarkably like a coffin. In fact it was an old dower chest which had probably belonged to the Spencers for generations. Edward had dug up the old metal clasp and lifted the lid; inside it was lined with another kind of wood, lighter and fragrant, cedar-wood perhaps. Another lid was lifted. In a moment Edward was scooping piles of neatly folded clothing on to the carpet.

“We can’t, Daddy, it’s too creepy,” insisted Faith, wiping the strings of the tennis racket on the bedclothes to clean off the minced remains of the moth.

“Not a corpse’s clothes,” pleaded Charity. “It’s awful. Just the thought of it makes me feel funny.”

“We must save money, my dear. Now be a good girl and take your dress off so we can try them on. If they don’t fit we’ll have to get the cook to work with her needle and thread—they tell me she’s very handy at that sort of thing. Besides, you’d do well to take a few lessons from her while you have the chance since you don’t seem to have learned much at school...One of these days you’ll have homes of your own and maybe, I don’t know, the way things are going you’ll not always have servants to look after you...in any case,” he added weakly, “a bit of sewing never did anyone any harm.”

“I think I’m going to faint,” Faith said grimly and sat down heavily on the bed, making its springs creak.

“Ugh! That’s the corpse’s death-bed you’re sitting on, Faithy.”

“You’ll speak of Angela with respect,” snapped Edward, “or you’ll both get a hiding and be sent to your rooms.”

“Why me? It was Catty that said it,” Faith said grumpily. “And what’s more I am feeling sick and will probably start spewing any moment.”

“Faith, don’t be disgusting,” Charity said, grinning in spite of herself. “You’ve started me feeling peculiar too.”

“Shut up, both of you, and pick one of these dresses before I lose my patience. They’re as good as new and some of them were never worn.”

“Which ones?” asked Faith dubiously, poking at the heap of clothing with her tennis racket.

The Major had lit his pipe and was watching the twins as they rummaged in the pile of clothing, holding dresses up to see what they looked like. It was clear (one of the countless things the Major had never known about her) that Angela had dressed extravagantly. Almost all her dresses had tucks in descending horizontal tiers; there was a heavy afternoon dress of velvet embossed with chrysanthemums which reached to the ground and trailed in a swallow-tail behind; there were heavy woollen dresses with overdresses, all with a great deal of frogging and embroidery; there was a blue satin evening dress with a band of black velvet that trailed as a sash behind; there was a dress of black taffeta or chiné silk with a vast amount of braid; and there was a moleskin cape and muff.

“It’s all so horribly old-lady!”

“Come on, we haven’t got all day,” Edward told them. “Make up your minds. If you don’t pick one of these dresses each within thirty seconds I’ll pick them for you.”

Under this threat the twins reluctantly made their selections: Charity a simple blue linen morning dress with a white organdie collar, Faith a silk jersey afternoon dress with a belt of gold cord and tassels to the ankles.

“I feel a bit sick, Daddy...”

But Edward’s patience was now clearly at an end and the twins retired sullenly to change.

Slumped in an armchair, the Major was wondering whether he might ask Edward for the photograph of himself which stood on the dressing-table (a picture taken in Brighton in 1916 showing a relatively carefree youth who bore little resemblance to the stoically grim head which these days accompanied him to the mirror). He wanted this picture merely to remove it from the room, from the neighbouring hairbrushes and other relics, to destroy it...he did not know why he wanted to do this. In any case, he was afraid that Edward might look askance at such a request.

Edward was kneeling among the bundles of clothing and rummaging through them abstractedly.

“Poor Angie! There’s lots more somewhere: petticoats and knickers and corsets and so forth...she liked clothes, used to buy things nobody’d ever wear out here in the country.”

He held up a dress of black velvet that billowed emptily in his hands, empty of Angela.

“Wore this the day she was presented at the Viceregal Lodge. For a joke we went out to Phoenix Park on the tram instead of hiring a carriage, both of us dressed up like dog’s dinners. How people stared at us! Bit of fun we had, you know, pretending to be Socialists. Angie said she was ashamed to be seen arriving on the tram, but she laughed about it afterwards like a good sport.” He stood up and went to stare at himself moodily in the mirror, picking up one of the silver brushes (tarnished blue-grey by months of neglect) and rubbing his thumb over the bristles.

“They’re only kids and it doesn’t really matter what they wear so long as it keeps them warm,” he added defensively. “Got to get hold of a bit of spare cash one way or another if I’m to give that blighter Ripon a helping hand.”

“Is that the reason?”

“Well, you said yourself that with a wife to support he’d be needing some cash to set himself up.”

The Major could remember saying no such thing but could see no point in denying it.

“But don’t you think his wife will have something?”

“I doubt it. Anyway, Ripon’s not the sort to accept charity, whatever his faults. In some ways, you know, he’s a chip off the old block. I suppose I should sell off these brushes and things as well. They’re not much good to poor Angie now. These trinkets might fetch something. Hate to do it, though.”

They lapsed into a lugubrious silence. Presently, with a sigh, Edward began: “You know, the one time in my life when I was really happy...” But at this moment the twins entered.

“My! Don’t they look smart?” cried Edward in genuine admiration. “Well, what d’you think of that, Brendan? Aren’t they lovely?”

The Major had to agree with him. The twins looked more lovely than ever standing there, identical, outraged, each holding up her skirts in small clenched fists. They uttered a simultaneous gasp.

“But we look like freaks, Daddy!”

“We can’t wear things like this. People will laugh themselves sick at us.”

“Nonsense, you look absolutely charming, you can take it from me. Young ladies knew how to dress themselves before the war.”

“Daddy, you surely don’t want us to look like freaks,” pleaded Faith, close to tears.

“That’s going too far! I refuse, I simply refuse!”

“Faith, I warned you! Charity! You’ll go to your rooms this instant,” shouted Edward, losing his temper. His anger impressed the twins sufficiently to quell them. They glared at him tearfully for a moment and then stamped out.

The soft-hearted Major hurried out after them and handed each a bar of chocolate (he had recently taken to carrying chocolate in his pockets to give to the ragged, famished children he encountered on his walks). They looked at the chocolate, sniffed, but finally accepted it.

The following day the Major came upon the twins in a deserted sitting-room sifting through a mountain of hats, muffs, boas and shoes. The hats were hopelessly lush and exotic, they told him peevishly. Who could possibly wear such things?

“Look at this!” Faith showed him a broad-brimmed felt hat swathed in yards of orange satin with a bird clinging to the back.

“Or this, it looks like a whole farmyard,” she said, throwing him another hat of black leghorn trimmed with a jungle of osprey feathers and real oats. They appeared to be mollified, however, by the boas; indeed, the Major found himself having to adjudicate a squabble that developed over a magnificent boa of magenta cock feathers. It went to Charity on the understanding that Faith should have first claim over a matching hat, tippet and muff of peacock feathers (the muff even had a beak and brown glass eyes on the alert), together with first choice of the silk parasols. Finally, the twins made another discovery: Angela’s shoes fitted them to perfection! Unfortunately, however, old Mrs Rappaport happened to hear about the shoes and caused a dreadful scene. They must wear their button boots up to their calves for the sake of their ankles! Otherwise they would look like milkmaids when they grew up. The old lady achieved the support of Edward in this matter (although, to tell the truth, he was losing interest in the twins’ clothing) and shoes were forbidden. The twins became spiteful and for days refused to go near their grandmother. But presently all was forgotten and nobody (except the Major) seemed to notice that they had gone back to wearing Angela’s shoes. Certainly no one thought of mentioning the fact to old Mrs Rappaport.

This incident marked the beginning and also, really, the end of Edward’s economy drive. The simple truth was that the old ladies were right: it was as if an economy drive had already been in operation. There was nothing much left to economize on. True, one could sack a few servants, but they were paid so little anyway it hardly seemed worth while. Besides, the place was already in a scarcely habitable state. If, into the bargain, the servants were sacked what would it be like? Well, probably, not much different, as a matter of fact, because the problem of keeping the place clean had long since gone beyond the point where Murphy and the blushing young girls “up from the country” could make a significant impact on it, even if they had wanted to (which they did not, particularly).

Murphy had been behaving oddly of late. At Edward’s meeting he had shown signs of abject terror lest his meagre income be stifled by the proposed economies. But now there came to the Major’s ears one or two extraordinary rumours about the aged manservant’s truculent behaviour; rumours, of course, which anyone who had set eyes on the chap could scarcely credit.

According to a story circulated by Miss Staveley, one of the oldest and deafest but not least talkative ladies in the hotel, Murphy had been asked to assist her up the stairs to her room on the first floor where she had the feeling she might find her pince-nez. The impudent old rascal was reported to have told her bluntly that she would do better to stay where she was...before padding away down some lonely corridor with a wheezing chuckle. Unable to believe her ears (she was distinctly hard of hearing, it was true) she had waited for him to come back. But there had been no sign of him. He had disappeared into the dim recesses of the interior and it was hopeless to look for him (nobody, not even the twins, not even Edward himself, knew the geography of that immense rambling building better than Murphy who had spent his life in it). She had not set eyes on him again for two days, by which time she had found her pince-nez in her sewing basket and lost them again (this time the Major was conscripted to help in the search and found them on the nose of the statue of Venus in the foyer). This rumour reached Edward who rebuked Murphy. But Murphy denied all knowledge of the affair and clearly did not know what pince-nez were; he seemed to have a vague idea that they were a reprehensible form of underwear worn by foreign ladies. One just had to give the fellow the benefit of the doubt and, besides, Miss Staveley... Edward tapped his forehead and rolled his eyes.

But whatever one might say about Miss Staveley one was obliged to add that she paid her bills regularly. This made her a person of consequence among the guests at the Majestic. However confused her apprehension of the world around her might seem at times, she was always listened to with respect. Another rumour, promoted this time by Mr Norton, the mathematical “genius,” had it that Murphy was well known for speaking seditiously in public houses. Miss Johnston remarked despondently: “No doubt we shall all be murdered in our beds by the wretched man,” but scarcely anyone took Murphy to be a serious menace, even full of whiskey and Bolshevism as he was reported to be. Nevertheless the old ladies and the Major agreed that it was a sign of the times. And what terrible times they were! At no point in recent history, reflected the Major (who was slumped in an armchair in an agreeable after-lunch torpor), at no point in the past two or three hundred years could the standards of decent people have been so threatened, could civilization have been so vulnerable and near to disintegration, as they were today. One just had to open the newspaper...

Another sign of the times was the derelict state of the fields that lay around the Majestic. Not planted in the spring because of Edward’s quarrel with the farm-workers, they now wore a thick green fur of weeds. The Major sometimes saw tattered children dragging aimlessly through these fields in a doleful search for something edible: a little corn that had seeded itself from last year’s harvest or a stray potato plant. Edward too seemed oppressed by this sight and although he said: “It’s their own damned fault. I told the silly beggars what would happen if they didn’t plant those fields,” he made no move to have the children chased away and even one day sent Seán Murphy out with a washing-tub full of windfalls from the orchard. The children fled, of course, at the sight of him and he was obliged to leave the tub there in the middle of the field. When he went back for it half an hour later it was empty.

“I sometimes wonder,” mused the Major, “what would happen if one caught one of those little brats young enough, taught him how to behave, sent him to a decent public school and so on. D’you suppose one could tell the difference between him and the son of a gentleman?”

“You might just as well dress up a monkey in a suit of clothes,” replied Edward shortly.

* * *

AMRITSAR

The findings of the Hunter Commission in regard to the disturbances in the Punjab in the spring of last year were issued last night as a Blue Book...General Dyer’s career as a soldier is over. All the members admit that firing was necessary. Even the Indians recognize that the riots could not have been quelled by any other means. They condemn General Dyer, however, in the first place, for firing without warning, and, in the next place, for continuing to fire when the necessity for drastic action had disappeared...Six months after an event it is very easy to weigh its circumstances in a deli-cate balance and to apportion approval and blame. No doubt, General Dyer acted rashly; but he probably had about two minutes in which to make up his mind. He was confronted with a fanatical Oriental mob, fired with anti-European frenzy. He knew that hundreds of white women and girls were dependent on him for their safety. Rightly or wrongly, he believed that the fate of India was at stake. Therefore, he gave the order to fire. We quite agree that he went beyond his brief. The “crawling” order was merely stupid. General Dyer was neither a politician nor a moralist. He was a soldier and, moreover, an Anglo-Indian. He thought of the memsahib who had been assaulted, and in India the memsahib is sacrosanct. The Hunter Report will have far-reaching consequences in India. We are not at all certain that they will lighten the task of the Indian Government. General Dyer’s condemnation, although inevitable and strictly correct, will be remembered in India when his unfortunate decision has been long forgotten.

* * *

NIGHT OF TERROR IN DERRY
Fierce Fighting in the Streets

Armed parties of Unionists and Sinn Feiners took possession of some of the streets and rifle and revolver fire was almost continuous during the greater part of the night. Our Londonderry Correspondent, telegraphing last night, says: “The fiercest and most fatal rioting of modern times in Londonderry occurred on Saturday night when several people were killed and many wounded. A state of the greatest terrorism prevailed throughout the night. On Sunday morning looting took place on an extensive scale and there were instances of actual and attempted incendiarism.”

* * *

CONNAUGHT RANGERS IN INDIA

A Reuter’s Simla message states that three-quarters of the men of the Connaught Rangers at Jullundar refused duty and laid down their arms upon receipt of a mail giving news of Irish events...

The detachment at Jutogh, six miles from Simla, is perfectly quiet. The whole affair is regarded as being entirely due to political causes and the Sinn Fein agitation.

* * *

In Kilnalough, as elsewhere in Ireland, it rained all that July. The farmhouses were now empty except for two or three old men, the rest of the workers having decamped after their abortive attempt to induce Edward with threats to hand over ownership. It was no doubt thanks to the fact that a contingent of Auxiliary Police were billeted at the Majestic that Edward escaped without harassment or injury. Other landowners in various parts of the country were prudently giving in to the demands made upon them at that time, but Edward remained inflexible and contemptuous. Given the state of the country and the frequency of terrorist attacks, any vindictive farm-labourer with a gun might have shot Edward down with impunity. In the meantime, however (provided he could find men willing to harvest them for him), Edward still had two meagre fields of slowly ripening corn.

The Major could see both of these fields from the window of his room; they lay one on each side of a gently sloping valley, separated only by a rutted cart-track that swept round by the farm and on to join the road to Kilnalough. Pale green at the beginning of August, the corn seemed to grow a little more blonde morning by morning. He had brought with him a pair of excellent field-glasses, made in Germany, which he had removed from the massive punctured chest of an apoplectic Prussian officer with waxed moustaches whom he had come upon lying upside down in a shell-crater. Every morning he used these glasses to scan the countryside and derived a particular pleasure from examining the shining, iridescent surface of the corn as it flowed this way or that along the valley in waves of syrup.

“Strange,” he thought one morning. “How did that get there?” A large boulder which he had never noticed before had appeared at the edge of one of the fields. Why should anyone go to the trouble of carting an extremely heavy boulder to the edge of a cornfield? He decided to take a walk over there later in the day.

But immediately after lunch the twins pounced on him. They wanted him to “be the man” while they practised some new dance steps; in particular, it seemed, they were anxious to learn “The Joy Trot” and “The Vampire.” They had succeeded in borrowing a gramophone and some new records from old Mr Norton, whose relentless pursuit of youth was truly amazing when one considered his physical decrepitude. At first Mr Norton had demanded that he should “be the man” in return for the use of his gramophone. But the twins were unenthusiastic. Besides, it was found that the rhythm was too lively for his arthritic joints and the twins absolutely refused to dance at half-speed as he proposed. Somewhat disgruntled, he settled for a “squeeze.” Each twin in turn was given a hug that squeezed a groan of air out of her, while the Major frowned and puffed at his pipe, wondering whether he shouldn’t intervene. But at last Mr Norton let them go and sat down gloomily to watch the Major’s clumsy efforts to do as the twins told him. For unfortunately the Major was a very poor dancer and found new steps difficult to acquire. Not that there was anything particularly difficult about the one-step or the foxtrot—they were remarkably like walking; the difficulty lay in matching his movements to those of his partner. He also sometimes had trouble turning corners.

“Not with your pipe,” said Faith, seizing it from his lips and taking it away while Charity busied herself with winding up the gramophone. “Now, hold me tighter for heaven’s sake.”

“Hm, I told you I wasn’t frightfully good at this sort of thing,” murmured the Major, discountenanced by the removal of his pipe. “Now let me get this straight...”

“Forward with your right foot!”

“Ah...”

“Dear God!”

“Sorry, I got mixed up.”

“You’d better let me lead. Now just listen to the rhythm and don’t bother to look at your feet...Oh, you’re perfectly hopeless!”

But the Major, although he was aware that music was being played, was at first deafened by the scraping of his own feet on the grimy floor of the ballroom and listened in vain for some sign which would tell him when to make his movements. He had started off with one softly yielding hand in his own horny palm and another resting like thistledown on his shoulder; but in no time at all he was being towed, pushed and dragged without ceremony this way and that, first by one twin, then by the other. For such slender, delicate creatures they were really amazingly strong: when Charity spilled a box of gramophone needles and dived under the piano to pick them up the Major involuntarily glimpsed the back of her smooth, firmly muscled thighs and (while fox-trotting swiftly forward to block this disturbing sight from Mr Norton’s avid gaze) found himself thinking that, physically at least, one could hardly still call her a child.

By now the Major was beginning to warm up and get the hang of things and did not need so much pulling and pushing. They changed the record to “By the Silver Sea” and while he had a rest the girls danced together most prettily, taking it in turns to be the man.

“The little darlings,” whispered Mr Norton hoarsely to the Major who had sat down beside him. “Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.”

The Major too was watching them with admiration as they spun round whirling their skirts and shaking their ankles in the air and doing all sorts of amusing and fanciful things without ever losing the rhythm or getting in each other’s way. With the exertion (the Major changed the needle and wound up the gramophone as quickly as he could, so that they would not stop this enjoyable display) they gradually became flushed and flirtatious. Their eyes sparkled. They flashed lingering smiles at the Major as they danced round. They licked their lips with delightful pink tongues and demurely lowered their lashes over moist, shining eyes. Dimples appeared in their cheeks and their teeth had never glistened more pearly white. “How perfectly charming they are,” thought the Major, “as they try out their attractions on me—though not in the least seriously—like young birds learning how to fly: the same attractions that one day they’ll use on the young men whose hearts they choose to break...How charming!” But a glance at Mr Norton’s puckered walnut face told him that the old rascal obviously considered that he was the target for the lingering smiles and licked lips and lowered lashes. He was returning the smiles with a roguish one of his own, a peeling back of the lips to exhibit unusually large yellow false teeth. The man was truly amazing. Really, one almost had to admire him for the tenacity with which he held on to the remnants of his youth.

Once more it was the Major’s turn. Dancing could really be quite enjoyable, he decided, and one girl melted into another so smoothly from one record to the next that he had trouble remembering which twin he was dancing with. It came as something of a shock when he realized that Mr Norton had fallen asleep on his chair (worn out by the sexual electricity in the air) and that the time was five o’clock and that he himself was exhausted.

“Just one more!” cried the twins, but the Major said no, he hadn’t realized the time, and picking up his pipe made for the door, ignoring their entreaties. It was only later, while he was thirstily drinking a cup of tea in the company of Miss Bagley and Miss Porteous, that he remembered the curious boulder which had appeared from nowhere at the edge of the cornfield. By that time it was too late to walk over and have a look at it. If it turned out to be still there—he fancied it might disappear as magically as it had arrived—he would go tomorrow. Having made this decision, he put the matter out of his mind in order to give his full attention to Miss Bagley and Miss Porteous, who already seemed to have discovered how he had spent the afternoon. Yes, he agreed, the younger generation’s love of dancing might well be one of the reasons for their disrespect for their elders; on the other hand, it was all in good fun, they really meant no harm by it. It was all very harmless. Yes, he would like another cup of tea, he had a “terrible thirst on him,” as the Irish would say.

He was still in pyjamas the following morning when he removed the German field-glasses from the cardboard box in which he carried them (the Prussian officer had inconsiderately bled all over the original velvet-lined leather case) and raised them to his eyes. The boulder was still there, of course, lying beside the waving ears of corn. He had not really expected to find it gone. But it had now been joined by another and much more startling object. The Major adjusted the focus of the glasses to make sure that it really was, yes—but how could it possibly be?—a tree stump, the stump of a tree, which quite positively had not been there yesterday, neither tree nor stump. But there it was, as large as life, beside the densely packed corn.

When he had finished dressing he went downstairs, but he was too early. Edward and the rest of the household had not yet even begun their breakfast; morning prayers were still being said. Outside the breakfast room the Major listened with a faint smile as Edward began to recite the list of things for which on this morning of 1920 one should give thanks to God. He lingered for a moment, leaning against the cold stone wall of the corridor and thinking that Edward’s voice sounded tired and disabused. And over the last few months the list seemed to have grown shorter. Edward’s voice ceased. Now he would be moving to the War Memorial to open the hinged leaves. Still smiling, the Major tiptoed away; the ranks of tiny accusing eyes would once more look for him in vain. Moreover, he would be first with the Irish Times and would not have to wait his turn through the long morning while the old ladies pored over the “Births and Deaths” column to see which of their contemporaries they had managed to survive.

When he saw Edward later in the morning he said: “I suppose you know there’s a clandestine harvest going on.”

To his surprise Edward nodded gloomily. “I thought as much, but I wasn’t sure. Now I shall have to do something.”

“What will you do?”

“God knows. I shall have to stop them one way or another.”

“Why not just let them take it! They must need it badly if they come out to cut it at night.”

“That’s quite out of the question. It’d never do to let them know that they can get away with stealing my property. The whole bally place would be stripped in two shakes.”

“Oh, surely not.”

“Look, it’s not my fault they cleared off. If they want to follow the wretched Shinners then let the Shinners feed them. Another thing, the corn isn’t even properly ripe yet. Any fool can see that.”

“I suppose they can’t wait,” said the Major with a sigh. “Mind you, I agree that it’s their own fault.”

“Really, Brendan, there’s such a thing as law and order, you know. If the country’s in such a mess at the moment it’s because people like you and I have been slack about letting the blighters get away with it.”

“Oh, hang law and order! Two miserable fields of corn which the poor beggars planted themselves anyway. You don’t mind letting them go hungry so long as your own pious principles are satisfied.”

There was a sudden silence. The Major was as surprised at his outburst as Edward. Edward flushed but said nothing.

He must have brooded about the matter, however, because after lunch he took the Major aside and told him that he would try to make arrangements to have it harvested and milled by people in Kilnalough and then distributed to the people round about who most needed it. He would also make sure that Dr Ryan and the parish priest heard of his intentions, so that they could warn the people to leave the corn alone until it was ripe. That way they wouldn’t be obliged to break the law, nor would his own “pious principles” (he smiled wryly) be offended. He had already sent Murphy into Kilnalough with the news.

For some time the Major had been impermeable to the rumours that circulated in the Majestic, having had his fill of them in the damp of the trenches where they grew like mushrooms. But now he found himself listening again, since the old ladies gobbled them up greedily and loved to share them with him (it was a mystery where they originated unless they were somehow generated by the revolutionary sentiments said to be bubbling in Murphy’s brain). The I.R.A. had planned to assassinate His Majesty, Miss Archer (no relation) assured him one day, with a dart tipped with curare fired from a blow-pipe by some form of savage imported specially from the jungles of Brazil.

“Oh, what nonsense!” the Major chaffed her (she was one of his favourites). “I’m surprised at you, Sybil, for believing such a cock-and-bull story.”

“But it’s perfectly true. I have it on the best authority.”

“Oh really!”

Miss Archer lowered her voice. “D.C.”

“D.C.?”

She clicked her tongue, despairing of the Major’s power to comprehend. “Dublin Castle.”

“Absolute rot,” laughed the Major.

But no, Miss Archer insisted that it was nothing less than the truth. And that wasn’t the half of it...Not only had the I.R.A. planned this dastardly act, they had come within a whisker of carrying it out. The Brazilian savage, wearing his own feathers and disguised as a tipster, had been placed beside the course at Ascot. As the Royal Carriage swept towards him he had raised his blow-pipe. The King had come nearer and nearer, had drawn level, the savage’s cheeks were actually bulging when...he had been taken by a fit of coughing (unused to the climate, he had died of pneumonia two days later), the dart had slithered out of the pipe and stuck harmlessly in the turf! Miss Archer had abandoned the pretence of seriousness and finished her story in a gale of maidenly giggles, her dim, rheumy, once beautiful eyes streaming with tears of laughter, so that the Major no longer knew whether she had ever intended him to take it seriously. Perhaps she no longer knew herself.

“I shall never believe another word you say,” the Major told her sternly.

There was another rumour believed by old Mrs Rice and the Misses Johnston, Laverty and Bagley (and at least half believed by the other ladies) to the effect that all the I.R.A. leaders spoke fluent German and that those mad women (Maud Gonne and the Gore-Booth girl who had married the man with the unpronounceable name) had both been mistresses of the Kaiser. As a supplement, Mr Norton indicated sotto voce to the Major that poor old Kaiser Bill had found them insatiable and had permanently impaired his health in an effort to uphold his honour.

Miss Staveley, as befitted her status at the Majestic, had a rumour vended and believed exclusively by herself but which nevertheless chilled for a moment any old lady who heard it: a scheme was afoot whereby every butcher in the country, whether pork or beef, would rise as one man and take their cleavers to the local gentry.

Yet the rumour which the Major liked most of all came from no less a person than Edward himself. He had heard, though it was probably “utter bilge,” that Dublin Castle’s water supply had been deliberately poisoned and the entire Executive laid low with the exception of a handful of the heaviest whiskey drinkers. These latter were desperately trying to conceal the situation while they coped with it. But what could they do? They were in a situation reminiscent of classical tragedy. The very elixir which had saved their lives now had them groping through an impenetrable alcoholic fog. As one cheerful intoxicated manoeuvre followed another, Sinn Fein prepared to strike a mortal blow at Ireland’s heart.

“Fatuous,” smiled the Major.

“It does seem a shade far-fetched, but one never knows, particularly these days.”

Yet if the Major was tempted to smile at some of these rumours he was always sobered quickly enough when he opened the newspaper. Since his return to Kilnalough not a single day had gone by without news of a raid or shooting or terrorist attack somewhere in Ireland. Indeed, these raids had become so numerous that since the end of May only the major disasters found their way into the main columns of the Irish Times, the remainder being relegated to a brief numbered list which appeared daily under the heading CATALOGUE OF CRIME or CAMPAIGN OF OUTRAGE.

1. Londonderry City. At 10.50 p.m. on Thursday, while Constables McDonough and Collis were on duty, they were fired at from a revolver, the bullet striking a wall beside where they were standing.

2. On the morning of Wednesday John Niland, Co. Galway, found that during the night the tails had been cut off nine cattle, some two or three inches of the fleshy part having been cut off in each case.

3. At 11.35 p.m. on Thursday three masked men, two of them armed, entered the house of Thomas Flattery, a candidate for the district councillorship, and asked him to sign a paper not to contest the election. He refused. The leader then said: “Go on your knees and make an Act of Contrition.” Mr Flattery said: “I am prepared to die.” Two raiders kept revolvers pointed at him, a third kept his wife from moving, and a fourth from outside the door said: “Shoot the dog.”

4. On Monday, at Ballyhaise, Co. Cavan, a large glass panel was broken in the Protestant church, and a bottle of wine stolen from the vestry.

5. Co. Cavan. Samuel Fife, postman, Cavan district, received the following letter through the post: “Fife, you have escaped the Huns, but should you come to Arvagh your days are numbered. Take this as final and prepare for death. The White Boys.”

6. On Wednesday the house of T. Box, Mountbellew, Co. Galway, was fired into. Last week his potato ridges were torn up and destroyed.

7. Co. Mayo. Patrick McAndrew, water bailiff, received a letter: “Death notice. I think it has come to the time of the day when no man will be allowed to save the fish for an English dog. If you do, you are doomed. Rory of the Rivers.”

8. Co. Kerry. Sergeant Coghlan received a letter: “You have been a good and diligent servant of the Crown so it is high time to end your gallop. I now advise you not to chance a sin on your soul as the reward we give good and faithful servants is 1–2 oz. of lead dead weight. For the future you are branded as a traitor. Our governor, Sinn Fein, has decided it.”

Before getting into bed that night the Major doused the candles and stood for a moment at the window looking out towards the invisible cornfields. In an hour or so, perhaps, men would appear out of the shadows like rodents out of the woodwork, and set to work reaping Edward’s corn by the dim, intermittent moonlight. Perhaps they were already out there. He yawned and got into bed. In a way it was pleasant to fall asleep thinking of the men working out there—silently, a faint swish of reaping sickles, a soft whisper, the muffled creak of a cartwheel. But of course by now they would know that Edward was on to their game and they would not come. It was pleasant, the summer night. A silent gale of sleep blew over the dark countryside, inclining the corn in waves, now this way, now that. He was happy, in spite of everything. Edward had been about to tell him, waiting for the twins to appear wearing Angela’s clothes, about the one time in his life that he had been really happy. “I must ask him,” the Major told himself as he fell asleep.

The Major was asleep on his back in a stiff military posture, feet together, hands by his sides, dreaming of Sarah. Later he lay on his stomach and for a while was almost conscious. The room was dark but there was a pink glow on the wall opposite the window. He sat up. There was a scraping sound by the dressing-table.

“Who’s there?” he whispered.

A match flared and dipped towards the branched candle-stick, lighting first one candle, then the other. It was Edward, haggard, in a dressing-gown.

“Ah!” exclaimed the Major joyfully. “I was just going to ask you something...” He stopped, unable to think what it was.

Edward threw open the window. With his hands on the sill he leaned out. Gradually coming to his senses, the Major sleepily pulled on his bedroom slippers and reached for his dressing-gown. Even before he reached the window he had begun to realize that something was wrong. He had not been asleep long enough; it was too dark for it to be dawn. He stared past Edward’s head at the distant lake of flame. The cornfields were blazing furiously on each side of the valley beyond the sloping ridge. All around them the blackness was perfect and impenetrable.

“Did you do this?”

“Don’t be a damn fool!”

“But why should they?”

“How the devil should I know?”

By now there was nothing to do but watch it burn. It took hardly any time at all.

Now in the Prussian officer’s field-glasses there was no waving corn to be seen, only an expanse of blackened earth. Here and there, where the corn had been still a trifle green, the stalks had not burned to the ground but stood up in scabrous rings and patches, making the Major think of the worm-eaten scalps of young boys whom he had seen trailing round the golf-links. “The wanton burning of food,” he thought. “As senseless as the plague.” Word had spread in the neighbourhood that Edward had burned the crop himself so that the country people should not have it. The Major guiltily remembered that this had been his own first thought and would have liked to make amends, particularly as Edward had taken on his disabused air.

“Naturally everyone thinks me capable of burning my own crops,” he said wryly to the Major. “Why, I’ll burn the blessed house down out of spite one of these days, I shouldn’t be surprised.” And he went off chortling grimly.

But if Edward had not set fire to the field, who had? Surely not the peasants themselves, they needed the corn too badly.

“Brendan, you’re not listening!”

“Yes, I am. I’ve heard every word you said. It’s about a bathing-costume.”

And still, it could have been an accident, a dropped match, perhaps, or a smouldering cigarette. Or perhaps it was one of those spontaneous fires that sometimes occur in hot weather, a fragment of broken glass catching the rays of the sun, or some such thing.

“Brendan, do you understand, we want eightpence. You’re not listening again!”

“Yes, I am. What d’you want eightpence for?”

“Oh, how many times have we got to tell you? For the pattern. Read it to him again, and for heaven’s sake listen this time!”

“‘Bathing-Suit 1149 (a Practical Bathing-Suit). This is a remarkably simple pattern. The knickers are cut in one piece and joined on to a plain bodice, while the overdress is on the lines of a coat-frock, with a back...’”

(In summer such fires are always possible. There had been a spell of warm, dry weather; the earth was brittle and broke into powder underfoot. But the Major did not really believe that it had been caused accidentally. It had started in the middle of the night and no fire was ever generated by the rays of the moon. Edward was convinced that it was the work of the Sinn Feiners, who were anxious to turn the peasants against him. If they became hungry enough they could be persuaded to do anything. It seemed the only realistic explanation.)

“‘...with a back, front, short sleeve, and straight stole collar. A plain belt buttoned over in front holds in the fullness round the waist, and gives the suit a neat finishing touch. (To the knee, with shoes and a cap.) Pattern eightpence.’”

“But why tell me all this?”

“Faithy, I swear that I’ll kill him if he says that just once more...Because we want eightpence to buy the blessed pattern with!”

“Certainly,” chuckled the Major, fumbling in his pocket. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

The Major had not yet managed to divest himself of his peculiar habit of patrolling restlessly from one room to another. Wandering aimlessly one day, he entered the writing-room, which was hardly ever used these days, and had a look round. The walls were panelled in dark oak but partly obscured by vast greyish tapestries depicting hunting scenes. Above the mantelpiece, for example, stretching up to the dim ceiling was an immense doe lying on its side on a table laden with fruit and round loaves of bread. One of the animal’s hind legs was twisted up at an angle to the table while in the foreground the graceful head lolled on its long neck. Once scarlet, the blood which dripped picturesquely from the slit white gullet was now as grey as the fruit on the table, as grey as dust. Tables, chairs and desks were distributed here and there in clusters.

A faint sound alerted him. Edward was fast asleep in a cavernous winged armchair of worn leather, his head lolling on one side, mouth open, face collapsed by weariness, by the beginnings of old age and despair. The Major stood there for a long moment in the silent room, appalled to see Edward looking so vulnerable, so disarmed. Then, as he was preparing to tiptoe away, a black shadow slipped from beneath a dusty escritoire and settled itself comfortably in Edward’s abandoned lap (for the great army of cats from the Imperial Bar had recently begun to commandeer certain other little-frequented rooms in the Majestic). Edward woke up, saw the Major watching him, muttered: “Fell asleep,” and cleared his throat with a long weary hooting sound which might have been the cry of a dying animal. Neither of them could think of anything to say.

Since the burning of the fields the weather had taken a turn for the worse: perhaps this was adversely affecting Edward’s spirits. In any case, it was clearly no comfort to him that the burned crop would very likely have been flattened by the rainstorms that howled around the Majestic and left shining puddles on the floor of the ballroom, even if it had escaped the fire. The storms retired to lash and grumble their way over the Irish Sea towards Wales, leaving a steady, interminable downpour that seemed to hang from the sky like a curtain of glass beads.

“Where’s my revolver?” demanded Edward one morning of one of the maids, having spent an hour rummaging through various drawers in his study.

“The cook has it, sir. She does have it safe in the press in the kitchen.”

“What the devil does she have it for?”

“She does be afraid of the Volunteers.”

Edward wasted no time in recovering the weapon—it was covered in floury fingerprints and wrapped in buttered paper —but told nobody what he intended to do with it. As the days passed, the old ladies continued to huddle in shivering groups like nomads round a camp-fire while the Major’s breath steamed up one window after another in various parts of the house. From one or other of these windows he would spot Edward stalking down the drive, oblivious of the water that beat heavily on his tweed cap and raised a faint spray from the shoulders of his trench coat. Very often this trench coat sagged heavily on one side and the Major glimpsed the butt of a revolver protruding from the pocket. Once he hurried after Edward with an umbrella, afraid that he might be about to do something foolish. But Edward was simply making his way towards the pistol-range. There the Major saw him standing at the edge of the clearing under the dripping trees, his cheeks scalded purple by the cold deluge, right arm raised stiff and straight to fire at...it was by no means clear what he was firing at, perhaps at a dandelion that grew uncomfortably from a crevice in the lodge wall. The hand on the end of this stiff arm wobbled violently between the explosions, but Edward’s face was impassive, dead. A thin needle of water streamed without interruption from the metal eye on the end of the butt. The Major withdrew into the sodden shrubbery and made his way thoughtfully up the drive with the rain drumming on his umbrella.

On the following day, however, the rain came to a stop and gave way to weak intermittent sunshine. The change in weather seemed to improve Edward’s spirits, for, as the Major was being dragged off by the twins for a swim, he called out cheerfully from the library window: “Don’t let those two little beasts drown you, Brendan.”

The two little beasts looked adorable. Their attempts to make practical bathing-suits from the pattern had ended in failure and tantrums of impatience, but by a lucky chance new bathing-suits had been sent to them by a remote aunt in London, a half-sister of Edward’s, reputed to be rather “fast” although married to a clergyman. The bathing-costumes she had chosen, certainly, were the most daring the Major had ever seen, sleeveless and with only the most perfunctory of skirts. Hardly had the rain stopped when the twins donned these scanty garments and set out for the strand. The Major himself was a poor swimmer and although he had pulled on a woollen costume borrowed from Edward (Edward being considerably stouter, it hung loosely over the Major’s flat stomach) he lacked enthusiasm; besides, he had heard that the water on the coast of Wexford was freezing even on the hottest day of summer. Consequently, he hoped to avoid entering it.

As it turned out, the twins had no serious intention of swimming either. They shrieked as the surf boiled over their ankles. When the Major, who was sitting on a rock and smoking his pipe, commanded them to go deeper they clung to each other and wailed piteously as a wave washed up to their knees. And that was as deep as they would go.

Presently the Major noticed the cadaverous features of Murphy peering down at him from behind an outcrop of rock.

“What is it you want?”

A lady was asking for him up at the house.

“A lady? Who the devil is it?”

But Murphy had already turned away and no doubt considered himself to be out of earshot.

The Major set off across the beach to the gravel path that led to the boat-house and squash court, then turned to climb the steps towards the first terrace. Looking up, he saw that Edward was waiting for him at the very top of the final flight of steps, on a level with the house. And with Edward was Sarah.

The Major brushed the sand from the blue-and-white stripes of his costume and began to run, springing up one flight of steps after another. Edward and Sarah waited motionless as he toiled steadily upwards, the empty bag of cloth (which Edward’s swelling chest and paunch normally filled) flapping in front of him. On one of the lower terraces he overtook Murphy, who was scurrying along with his head down as if he too were in a great hurry. He uttered a gasp of fear when the panting, blue-striped Major suddenly sprang from behind him, taking three stone steps at a time, his bare feet making no noise on the smooth surface. The aged manservant was swiftly left behind to labour up the steps alone—and, indeed, soon vanished altogether along some alternative route.

As the Major reached the last flight of steps, from the top of which Edward and Sarah looked down at him smiling, he slowed to a more dignified pace and thought: “Why am I in such a hurry? Really, she’s only a friend. She’ll think me a silly ass for running all the way.”

He reached the top at last. Edward was saying: “A very dear friend of ours, Brendan, has come to see us...” and he smiled at Sarah with an expression of great warmth and kindness.

“Ouf!” gasped the Major. “I’m out of breath...” And he was silenced again by the need for air.

“It’s nice to be back. How are you, Brendan?”

“Oh, fine, fine.”

“Sarah and Angela used to be great friends, you know,” Edward explained unnecessarily, eyes sadly lowered for a moment to the still heaving, sagging stripes of the Major’s chest. “Angela used to think the world of you, my dear.”

“And I of her,” Sarah said calmly, almost indifferently.

And the Major, while nodding piously to indicate that of course everyone thought the world of everyone, as was only natural, and there need be no doubt in anyone’s mind on that score (he was still flustered from his rapid climb and anxious to agree with everyone), made a rapid and oblique appraisal of her and decided that she looked older and less beautiful. It was a number of months, mind you, since he had last seen her and sometimes a girl in her twenties will change enormously, yes, just from one year to the next, he had often heard it said...something to do with the glands, most likely. Her eyes were still a delightful grey, of course, and her face and hands still attractively sunburned (the Major not being the sort of indoor fellow who likes his ladies lily-white) but her features had a fretful cast; she was probably still weary from travel. What changed her appearance most of all was her hair, which no longer fell freely over her shoulders but was now very neatly secured in a chignon. It was that, more than anything, which made her look older. It made her look like a governess—which was exactly what she had become.

Edward had asked her a polite question about her stay in France (although he already seemed to know all about it) in order to give the Major time to recover his breath, and Sarah was saying that the family had been charming and as for the children, her charges, leaving them had been (the Major listened in vain for a change in her measured, indifferent tone) ...had been heartbreaking. Now it was the Major’s turn to say something and both Edward and Sarah turned to him. But he could hardly express the critical thoughts which had been passing through his mind with regard to Sarah, so he panted artificially a little longer. At last he exclaimed: “I must have left my pipe on the beach,” but then he noticed that his fingers were still curled round a dark wooden object. He stuck it in his mouth and then removed it. Both Sarah and Edward burst out laughing.

Sarah said: “Brendan, you look positively absurd in that bathing-suit.”

Sarah was expected home, she said, and had just looked in for a moment. But she seemed in no great hurry, so the Major went upstairs to wash the sand from his skin and change into more suitable clothes, rubbing macassar oil into his hair and brushing it meticulously smooth. This effort was wasted, however. By the time he went downstairs there was no sign of Sarah. The twins had come up from the beach but they were sulking for some reason and when he asked them if they knew where Sarah was they shrugged their shoulders and said that they hadn’t the faintest. Nor was there any sign of Edward.

He noticed that some of the old ladies were throwing meaning glances in his direction. “What’s the matter with them now?” he wondered irritably. Whatever it was, he had no time for them at the moment. Moreover, he was tired of being considered their protector. Presently, however, he came upon the reason for their meaning glances. Peering into the ladies’ lounge he saw that it was empty except for the broad uniformed back of Captain Bolton. He had his feet up on a sofa and was reading a magazine.

“You may not be aware of the fact, but this room is reserved for ladies.”

Bolton turned slowly. In his hand he held a lady’s lorgnette. He lifted it to his eyes and surveyed the Major for a moment in silence. Then he tossed it aside and turned back to his magazine, saying: “Tell someone to bring me some tea, old boy.”

The Major turned away angrily. There was nothing he could do except find Edward, which was what he was trying to do already. At last he came upon him in the foyer.

“Where on earth have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

“Taking Sarah home. I say, you do look smart, Brendan. Remind me to ask you for the name of your tailor.”

“Yes, yes, by all means...The thing is that one of those Auxiliary fellows, the one called Bolton, is upsetting the ladies by sitting in their lounge. I tried to get him to leave but it was no go. Maybe you could have a word with him.”

The Major would have accompanied Edward but at this moment one of the maids came to tell him that Miss Porteous was summoning him to the Palm Court. She had been driven out of the ladies’ lounge, she told him when he had at last located her amid the foliage, by that awful man. What was it that she wanted? inquired the Major patiently. Oh yes, she wanted two things: one was for him to kill a spider which had been making repeated attempts to climb on to her shoe and was causing her great distress. And the other? She would tell him the other in a minute...wait...she put a small, swollen-jointed wrist to her brow and tried to think what it was.

“I can’t see this ravening beast, Miss Porteous, that’s been trying to attack you,” the Major said, peering on the dusty, shadowy floor. And then, imagining that he had perhaps seen something scurrying away, he murmured, “I see it,” and stepped heavily forward, crushing something beneath the sole of his shoe. He made no attempt to examine the remains of his victim. “I suppose that means bad luck for me, doesn’t it?”

“Oh dear, I hope not,” said Miss Porteous. “I’ve just thought of what I wanted: someone to help me wind my wool.”

A few moments later, as he sat there, hands raised in an attitude of surrender or benediction with the skein of wool diminishing between them, a roar of angry shouting broke out from the direction of the ladies’ lounge. It was Edward losing his temper.

Later in the evening a story circulated among the jubilant old ladies to the effect that during his confrontation with Bolton, Edward had threatened to call the police. When Bolton had pointed out that he was the police, Edward, outraged, had telephoned to Dublin Castle where he had an influential friend. The matter was being dealt with and it was likely that Bolton would lose his job or, at the very least, be reduced in rank.

There was a curious supplement to this story. After Bolton had been evicted from the ladies’ lounge he had retired, vanquished (at least, in the eyes of the old ladies), to the Prince Consort wing. On his way he had passed through a small antechamber where a number of ladies had gathered while waiting to reoccupy their rightful territory. He had appeared unperturbed by his encounter with Edward, at most a trifle preoccupied. He might have passed through without noticing the ladies had not Miss Johnston abruptly hissed: “And I should think so too!” Captain Bolton had paused then and, smiling politely, had plucked a pale pink rose from a vase on one of the tables. Then, holding it delicately between finger and thumb, he had walked over to where the ladies were sitting. The more timorous ladies had looked away. Miss Johnston, however, was far from supine by nature (the Major had heard that her father had died on the Frontier, taking with him some astonishing number of the dark-skinned persons who had sought to oppose his will). She had straightened herself resolutely. Captain Bolton had stood there for a moment, bowed politely, and offered her the flower. Naturally she had refused it. He had continued to stand there, still smiling. It was an agonizing moment. At any instant, one felt, he might fly into an uncontrollable rage and, drawing his revolver, wreak his vengeance on the defenceless ladies. Instead of that, however, he had done an even more extraordinary thing. Slowly, methodically, petal by petal, he had begun to eat the rose. The ladies had watched him munching it in amazement and alarm. He was in no hurry. He did not wolf it as one might have expected (the man’s reason was clearly unhinged). With his lips he had dragged off one petal after another, masticating each one slowly and with evident enjoyment until at last there were no petals left. But he had not stopped there. With his front teeth he had bitten off a part of the stem, calmly chewed it, swallowed it, and then bitten off another piece. In no time he had eaten the entire stem (on which there had been two or three wicked-looking thorns). The ladies had stared at him aghast, but he had merely smiled, bowed again, and strolled away.

The Major sighed when he heard this and agreed that it was an incredible way to behave. Later he asked Edward if it was true that he had telephoned to Dublin Castle. Edward nodded.

“There’s something rather odd I’ve been meaning to tell you. D’you remember we had a good laugh the other day when I told you a rumour I’d heard about the water supply at the Castle?”

“I remember. Only the whiskey drinkers survived.”

“That’s right. Well, it’s probably just a coincidence but the fellow I spoke to on the telephone was quite definitely tipsy...in fact, he was as drunk as a lord!”