[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Meanwhile Lady Boscastle’s lorgnette was directed for a moment at Joan, and then at Roy.“I don’t for the life of me see,” said Lord Boscastle, gazing wistfully at the house, “why I should be dragged out here.When I might be eating in perfect comfort in my house.”It sounded a reasonable lament.It sounded more reasonable than it was.For in the house we should in fact have been eating a tepid and indifferent lunch, instead of this delectable cold one.Lady Muriel had bludgeoned the kitchen into efficiency, which Lady Boscastle did not exert herself to do.It was the best meal I remembered at Boscastle.We ended with strawberries and moselle.Lady Boscastle, who was eating less each month, got through her portion.“It’s a fine taste, my dear Muriel,” she said, “I recall vividly the first time someone gave it me–”I recognised that tone by now.It meant that she was thinking of some admirer in the past.I did not know how much Joan was listening to her aunt: but she made herself put a decent face on it.After lunch, Lady Muriel was not ready to let us rest.“Archery,” she said inexorably.Another file of servants came down with targets, quivers, cases of bows.The targets were set up and we shot through the sleepy afternoon.Lord Boscastle was fairly practised, and it was the kind of game to which Roy and I applied ourselves.I noticed Lady Boscastle watching the play of muscle underneath Roy’s shirt.She kept an interest in masculine grace.I thought she was surprised to see how strong he was.Joan shot with us for a time.She and Roy spoke to each other only about the game, though once, when he misfired, she said, with a flash of innocence, intimacy, forgetfulness: “It must have bounced off that joint.Didn’t you feel it?” She was speaking of the first finger of his left hand; the top joint had grown askew.She was not looking at his hand.She knew it by heart.Lady Boscastle was assisted to the car before tea.For the rest of us, tea was brought down from the house, though Lady Muriel maintained the al fresco spirit by boiling our own water over a spirit stove.Lord Boscastle said, as though aggrieved: “You ought to know by now, Muriel, that I’m no good at tea.” He drank a cup, and felt that he had served his sentence for the day.So he too went towards the house, having taken the precaution of booking Joan for bridge that night.Some time after, the four of us started to follow him.Lady Muriel had uprooted the flag, and was carrying it home; all the paraphernalia of the meals was left for the servants.The site looked overcrowded with crockery: we had left it behind when Roy suddenly challenged me to a last round with the bow.“Just two more shots, Lady Mu,” he said.“We’ll catch you up.”Joan hesitated, as if she were pulled back to watch.Then she walked away with her mother.Roy and I shot our arrows.As we went towards the targets to retrieve them, Roy said: “It’s over with Joan and me.”“I was afraid so.”“If she comes to you, try and help.She may not come.She’s dreadfully proud.But if she does, please try and help.” His face was angry, dark and strained.“She has so little confidence.Try everything you know.”I said that I would.“Tell her I’m useless,” he said.“Tell her I can’t stand anyone for long unless they’re as useless as I am.Tell her I’m mad.”He plucked an arrow from the target, and spoke quietly and clearly: “There’s one thing she mustn’t believe.She mustn’t think she’s not attractive.It matters to her – intolerably.Tell her anything you like about me – so long as she doesn’t think that.”He was torn and overcome.He was unusually reticent about his love affairs: even in our greatest intimacy, he had told me little.But that afternoon, as we walked up the valley, he spoke with a bitter abandon.Physical passion meant much to Joan, more than to any woman he had known.Unless she found it again, she could not stop herself becoming harsh and twisted.We were getting close behind Joan and her mother, and he could not say more.But before we caught them up, he said: “Old boy, there’s not much left.”It was some days before I spoke to Joan.She was not a woman on whom one could intrude sympathy.The party stretched on through empty days.Roy took long walks with Lady Muriel, and I spent much time by Lady Boscastle’s chair.She had diagnosed the state of her niece’s affair, and had lost interest in it.“My dear boy, the grand climaxes of all love affairs are too much the same.Now the overtures have a little more variety.” At dinner the political quarrels became rougher: we tried to shut them out, but the news would not let us [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]