But of course it’s been you, Antonia, who have done the talking; because you I imagine know more than I do, or may think you care very much more. I feel rather foolish—do you mind if I go?’ She deferentially sat, awaiting the word from one or another of the transfixed women. Not a sign having come, she seemed forced to add: ‘So, I suppose it is Cousin Guy? I wondered, but I’d never have thought one could tie up a “G” into such a knot.’
‘It could be done,’ said Antonia, ‘and it was.’
‘The rest of the writing’s not really difficult, once you come to know it.’
‘How dared you, poking and prying?’ cried out Lilia.
Antonia, at nervous work with her thumb-nail dislodging a gooseberry seed from her lower teeth, broke off to say: ‘Lilia, I shouldn’t brood.’
‘And why should I not?’
‘I could hardly tell you.—Who are they to?’ Antonia asked off-hand, still giving attention to the seed.
‘They have no beginnings,’ Jane answered, weighing the question calmly. ‘I mean to say, they simply begin. So I cannot help. And I shall not show them; I cannot see why I should.’
‘Why indeed?’ asked Antonia, so agreeably as to make this all go flat. She could not even be bothered to speak again till she had finished tightening her pearl slip-knot and twisting her neck to see if she had choked herself. ‘Naturally, finding’s keeping,’ she then announced. Lilia’s failure to see things in that light was marked by an absolute absence of all expression—reaching round her, she began to stack plates on plates, dishes on dishes. But sweat broke out on her forehead and upper lip: it was afternoon, most brutal phase of the day, which had leapt upon and was demolishing the poor snow-woman. She forgot the plates and began to pluck at the deep V neck of her cotton dress, desperately trying to fan air down it; until the humidity starting up even in the insides of her elbows made her unjoint and drop her arms like a doll’s. She leaned back in her chair to gasp, and her back adhered like a stamp to the curved mahogany. Lilia’s being so humblingly overcome worked upon the others as nothing else could—Antonia writhed inside her own body; Jane turned away to contemplate a darkened oil-painting of hilly forests.
Lilia said: ‘I’m in no state to argue.
‘Then don’t worry.’
‘But it seems to me, private letters are private letters.’
‘That’s how it apparently seems to Jane.’
The girl remarked: ‘There’s a stag in that picture I never saw.’
‘They never, never were to her,’ Lilia averred, in a voice of not yet exhausted scorn.
Antonia shrugged. ‘She likes to feel that they are.’
That brought Jane back slowly from the painting, with something of its phantasmagoric and distant oddness still in her eyes. ‘Thank you for explaining for me,’ she said, without irony though also without the ironic love for Antonia she had seldom not shown. ‘You so nearly understand so well.’ In the act of getting up from her chair, she hesitated for a chivalrous moment towards Lilia, but after all could think of nothing to say, or at least of nothing not better left unsaid. So she quitted them, taking her plate and her father’s away with her and into the kitchen, where Kathie was sitting over her dinner.
Out through the kitchen back door, into the yard. The slate roofs sent shimmers up; the red doors, ajar, all seemed caught by a spell in the act of opening; white outbuildings tottered there in the glare. Grass which had seeded between the cobbles parched and, dying, deadened her steps: a visible silence filled the place—long it was since anyone had been here. Slime had greenly caked in the empty trough, and the unprecedented loneliness of the afternoon looked out, as through eyelets cut in a mask, from the archways of the forsaken dovecote. Not a straw stirred, or was there to stir, in the kennel; and above her something other than clouds was missing from the
‘It could be done,’ said Antonia, ‘and it was.’
‘The rest of the writing’s not really difficult, once you come to know it.’
‘How dared you, poking and prying?’ cried out Lilia.
Antonia, at nervous work with her thumb-nail dislodging a gooseberry seed from her lower teeth, broke off to say: ‘Lilia, I shouldn’t brood.’
‘And why should I not?’
‘I could hardly tell you.—Who are they to?’ Antonia asked off-hand, still giving attention to the seed.
‘They have no beginnings,’ Jane answered, weighing the question calmly. ‘I mean to say, they simply begin. So I cannot help. And I shall not show them; I cannot see why I should.’
‘Why indeed?’ asked Antonia, so agreeably as to make this all go flat. She could not even be bothered to speak again till she had finished tightening her pearl slip-knot and twisting her neck to see if she had choked herself. ‘Naturally, finding’s keeping,’ she then announced. Lilia’s failure to see things in that light was marked by an absolute absence of all expression—reaching round her, she began to stack plates on plates, dishes on dishes. But sweat broke out on her forehead and upper lip: it was afternoon, most brutal phase of the day, which had leapt upon and was demolishing the poor snow-woman. She forgot the plates and began to pluck at the deep V neck of her cotton dress, desperately trying to fan air down it; until the humidity starting up even in the insides of her elbows made her unjoint and drop her arms like a doll’s. She leaned back in her chair to gasp, and her back adhered like a stamp to the curved mahogany. Lilia’s being so humblingly overcome worked upon the others as nothing else could—Antonia writhed inside her own body; Jane turned away to contemplate a darkened oil-painting of hilly forests.
Lilia said: ‘I’m in no state to argue.
‘Then don’t worry.’
‘But it seems to me, private letters are private letters.’
‘That’s how it apparently seems to Jane.’
The girl remarked: ‘There’s a stag in that picture I never saw.’
‘They never, never were to her,’ Lilia averred, in a voice of not yet exhausted scorn.
Antonia shrugged. ‘She likes to feel that they are.’
That brought Jane back slowly from the painting, with something of its phantasmagoric and distant oddness still in her eyes. ‘Thank you for explaining for me,’ she said, without irony though also without the ironic love for Antonia she had seldom not shown. ‘You so nearly understand so well.’ In the act of getting up from her chair, she hesitated for a chivalrous moment towards Lilia, but after all could think of nothing to say, or at least of nothing not better left unsaid. So she quitted them, taking her plate and her father’s away with her and into the kitchen, where Kathie was sitting over her dinner.
Out through the kitchen back door, into the yard. The slate roofs sent shimmers up; the red doors, ajar, all seemed caught by a spell in the act of opening; white outbuildings tottered there in the glare. Grass which had seeded between the cobbles parched and, dying, deadened her steps: a visible silence filled the place—long it was since anyone had been here. Slime had greenly caked in the empty trough, and the unprecedented loneliness of the afternoon looked out, as through eyelets cut in a mask, from the archways of the forsaken dovecote. Not a straw stirred, or was there to stir, in the kennel; and above her something other than clouds was missing from the
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