“Good-evening again, Eleanor,” he said, bowing over her hand. “You’re looking very young. You’re looking extraordinarily handsome. I like you in those clothes,” he said, looking at her Indian cloak.

  “The same to you, North,” she said. She looked up at him. She thought she had never seen him look so handsome, so vigorous.

  “Aren’t you going to dance?” she asked. The music was in full swing.

  “Not unless Sally will honour me,” he said, bowing to her with exaggerated courtesy. What has happened to him? Eleanor thought. He looks so handsome, so happy. Sally rose. She gave her hand to Nicholas.

  “I will dance with you,” she said. They stood for a moment waiting; and then they circled away.

  “What an odd-looking couple!” North exclaimed. He screwed his face up into a grin as he watched them. “They don’t know how to dance!” he added. He sat down by Eleanor in the chair that Nicholas had left empty.

  “Why don’t they marry?” he asked.

  “Why should they?” she said.

  “Oh, everybody ought to marry,” he said. “And I like him, though he’s a bit of a — shall we say ‘bounder?’” he suggested, as he watched them circling rather awkwardly in and out.

  “‘Bounder’?” Eleanor echoed him.

  “Oh it’s his fob, you mean,” she added, looking at the gold seal which swung up and down as Nicholas danced.

  “No, not a bounder,” she said aloud. “He’s—”

  But North was not attending. He was looking at a couple at the further end of the room. They were standing by the fireplace. Both were young; both were silent; they seemed held still in that position by some powerful emotion. As he looked at them, some emotion about himself, about his own life, came over him, and he arranged another background for them or for himself — not the mantelpiece and the bookcase, but cataracts roaring, clouds racing, and they stood on a cliff above a torrent. . . .

  “Marriage isn’t for everyone,” Eleanor interrupted.

  He started. “No. Of course not,” he agreed. He looked at her. She had never married. Why not? he wondered. Sacrificed to the family, he supposed — old Grandpapa without any fingers. Then some memory came back to him of a terrace, a cigar and William Whatney. Was not that her tragedy, that she had loved him? He looked at her with affection. He felt fond of everyone at the moment.

  “What luck to find you alone, Nell!” he said, laying his hand on her knee.

  She was touched; the feel of his hand on her knee pleased her.

  “Dear North!” she exclaimed. She felt his excitement through her dress; he was like a dog on a leash; straining forward with all his nerves erect, she felt, as he laid his hand on her knee.

  “But don’t marry the wrong woman!” she said.

  “I?” he asked. “What makes you say that?” Had she seen him, he wondered, shepherding the girl downstairs?

  “Tell me—” she began. She wanted to ask him, coolly and sensibly, what his plans were, now that they were alone; but as she spoke she saw his face change; an exaggerated expression of horror came over it.

  “Milly!” he muttered. “Damn her!”

  Eleanor glanced quickly over her shoulder. Her sister Milly, voluminous in draperies proper to her sex and class, was coming towards them. She had grown very stout. In order to disguise her figure, veils with beads on them hung down over her arms. They were so fat that they reminded North of asparagus; pale asparagus tapering to a point.

  “Oh, Eleanor!” she exclaimed. For she still kept relics of a younger sister’s doglike devotion.

  “Oh, Milly!” said Eleanor, but not so cordially.

  “How nice to see you, Eleanor!” said Milly, with her little old-woman’s chuckle; yet there was something deferential in her manner. “And you too, North!”

  She gave him her fat little hand. He noticed how the rings were sunk in her fingers, as if the flesh had grown over them. Flesh grown over diamonds disgusted him.

  “How very nice that you’re back again!” she said, settling slowly down into her chair. Everything, he felt, became dulled. She cast a net over them; she made them all feel one family; he had to think of their relations in common; but it was an unreal feeling.

  “Yes, we’re staying with Connie,” she said; they had come up for a cricket match.

  He sunk his head. He looked at his shoes.

  “And I’ve not heard a word about your travels, Nell,” she went on. They fall and fall, and cover all, he went on, as he listened to the damp falling patter of his aunt’s little questions. But he was in such a superfluity of high spirits that he could still make her words jingle. Did the tarantulas bite, she was asking him, and were the stars bright? And where shall I spend tomorrow night? he added, for the card in his waistcoat pocket rayed out of its own accord without regard for the context scenes which obliterated the present moment. They were staying with Connie, she went on, who was expecting Jimmy, who was home from Uganda . . . his mind slipped a few words, for he was seeing a garden, a room, and the next word he heard was “adenoids” — which is a good word, he said to himself, separating it from its context; wasp-waisted; pinched in the middle; with a hard, shining, metallic abdomen, useful to describe the appearance of an insect — but here a vast bulk approached; chiefly white waistcoat, lined with black; and Hugh Gibbs stood over them. North sprang up to offer him his chair.

  “My dear boy, you don’t expect me to sit on that?” said Hugh, deriding the rather spindly seat that North offered him.

  “You must find me something—” he looked about him, holding his hands to the sides of his white waistcoat, “more substantial.”

  North pulled a stuffed seat towards him. He lowered himself cautiously.

  “Chew, chew, chew,” he said as he sat down.

  And Milly said, “Tut-tut-tut,” North observed.

  That was what it came to — thirty years of being husband and wife — tut-tut-tut — and chew-chew-chew. It sounded like the half-inarticulate munchings of animals in a stall. Tut-tut-tut, and chew-chew-chew — as they trod out the soft steamy straw in the stable; as they wallowed in the primeval swamp, prolific, profuse, half-conscious, he thought; listening vaguely to the good-humoured patter, which suddenly fastened itself upon him.

  “What d’you weigh, North?” his uncle was asking, sizing him up. He looked him up and down as if he were a horse.

  “We must get you to fix a date,” Milly added, “when the boys are home.”

  They were inviting him to stay with them at the Towers in September for cub-hunting. The men shot, and the women — he looked at his aunt as if she might be breaking into young even there, on that chair — the women broke off into innumerable babies. And those babies had other babies; and the other babies had — adenoids. The word recurred; but it now suggested nothing. He was sinking; he was falling under their weight; the name in his pocket even was fading. Could nothing be done about it? he asked himself. Nothing short of revolution, he thought. The idea of dynamite, exploding dumps of heavy earth, shooting earth up in a tree-shaped cloud, came to his mind, from the War. But that’s all poppy-cock, he thought; war’s poppy-cock, poppy-cock. Sara’s word “poppy-cock” returned. So what remains? Peggy caught his eye, where she stood talking to an unknown man. You doctors, he thought, you scientists, why don’t you drop a little crystal into a tumbler, something starred and sharp, and make them swallow it? Common sense; reason; starred and sharp. But would they swallow it? He looked at Hugh. He had a way of blowing his cheeks in and out, as he said tut-tut-tut and chew-chew-chew. Would you swallow it? he said silently to Hugh.

  Hugh turned to him again.

  “And I hope you’re going to stay in England now, North,” he said, “though I dare say it’s a fine life out there?”

  And so they turned to Africa and the paucity of jobs. His exhilaration was oozing. The card no longer rayed out pictures. The damp leaves were falling. They fall and fall and cover all, he murmured to himself and looked at his aunt, colourless save for a brown stain on her forehead; and her hair colourless save for a stain like the yolk of egg on it. All over he suspected she must be soft and discoloured like a pear that has gone sleepy. And Hugh himself — his great hand was on his knee — was bound round with raw beef-steak. He caught Eleanor’s eye. There was a strained look in it.

  “Yes, how they’ve spoilt it,” she was saying.

  But the resonance had gone out of her voice.

  “Brand-new villas everywhere,” she was saying. She had been down in Dorsetshire apparently.

  “Little red villas all along the road,” she went on.

  “Yes, that’s what strikes me,” he said, rousing himself to help her, “how you’ve spoilt England while I’ve been away.”

  “But you won’t find many changes in our part of the world, North,” said Hugh. He spoke with pride.

  “No. But then we’re lucky,” said Milly. “We have several large estates. We’re very lucky,” she repeated. “Except for Mr Phipps,” she added. She gave a tart little laugh.

  North woke up. She meant that, he thought. She spoke with an acerbity that made her real. Not only did she become real, but the village, the great house, the little house, the church and the circle of old trees also appeared before him in complete reality. He would stay with them.

  “That’s our parson,” Hugh explained. “Quite a good chap in his way; but high — very high. Candles — that sort of thing.”

  “And his wife . . .” Milly began.

  Here Eleanor sighed. North looked at her. She was dropping off to sleep. A glazed look, a fixed expression, had come over her face. She looked terribly like Milly for a moment; sleep brought out the family likeness. Then she opened her eyes wide; by an effort of will she kept them open. But obviously she saw nothing.

  “You must come down and see what you make of us,” Hugh said. “What about the first week in September, eh?” He swayed from side to side as if his benevolence rolled about in him. He was like an old elephant who may be going to kneel. And if he does kneel, how will he ever get up again, North asked himself. And if Eleanor falls sound asleep and snores, what am I going to do, left sitting here between the knees of the elephant?

  He looked round for an excuse to go.

  There was Maggie coming along, not looking where she was going. They saw her. He felt a strong desire to cry out, “Take care! Take care!” for she was in the danger zone. The long white tentacles that amorphous bodies leave floating so that they can catch their food, would suck her in. Yes, they saw her: she was lost.

  “Here’s Maggie!” Milly exclaimed, looking up.

  “Haven’t seen you for an age!” said Hugh, trying to heave himself up.

  She had to stop; to put her hand into that shapeless paw. Using the last ounce of energy that remained to him, from the address in his waistcoat pocket, North rose. He would carry her off. He would save her from the contamination of family life.

  But she ignored him. She stood there, answering their greetings with perfect composure as if using an outfit provided for emergencies. Oh Lord, North said to himself, she’s as bad as they are. She was glazed; insincere. They were talking about her children now.

  “Yes. That’s the baby,” she was saying, pointing to a boy who was dancing with a girl.

  “And your daughter, Maggie?” Milly asked, looking round.

  North fidgeted. This is the conspiracy, he said to himself; this is the steam roller that smooths, obliterates; rounds into identity; rolls into balls. He listened. Jimmy was in Uganda; Lily was in Leicestershire; my boy — my girl . . . they were saying. But they’re not interested in other people’s children, he observed. Only in their own; their own property; their own flesh and blood, which they would protect with the unsheathed claws of the primeval swamp, he thought, looking at Milly’s fat little paws, even Maggie, even she. For she too was talking about my boy, my girl. How then can we be civilised, he asked himself?

  Eleanor snored. She was nodding off, shamelessly, helplessly. There was an obscenity in unconsciousness, he thought. Her mouth was open; her head was on one side.

  But now it was his turn. Silence gaped. One has to egg it on, he thought; somebody has to say something, or human society would cease. Hugh would cease; Milly would cease; and he was about to apply himself to find something to say, something with which to feed the immense vacancy of that primeval maw, when Delia, either from the erratic desire of a hostess always to interrupt, or divinely inspired by human charity — which he could not say — came beckoning.

  “The Ludbys!” she exclaimed. “The Ludbys!”

  “Oh where? The dear Ludbys!” said Milly, and up they heaved and off they went, for the Ludbys, it appeared, seldom left Northumberland.

  “Well, Maggie?” said North, turning to her — but here Eleanor made a little click at the back of her throat. Her head pitched forward. Sleep, now that she slept soundly, had given her dignity. She looked peaceful, far from them, rapt in the calm which sometimes gives the sleeper the look of the dead. They sat silent, for a moment, alone together, in private.

  “Why — why — why—” he said at last, making a gesture as if he were plucking tufts of grass from the carpet.

  “Why?” Maggie asked. “Why what?”

  “The Gibbses,” he murmured. He jerked his head at them, where they stood talking by the fireplace. Gross, obese, shapeless, they looked to him like a parody, a travesty, an excrescence that had overgrown the form within, the fire within.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. She looked too. But she said nothing. Couples came dancing slowly past them. A girl stopped, and her gesture as she raised her hand, unconsciously, had the seriousness of the very young anticipating life in its goodness which touched him.

  “Why — ?” he jerked his thumb in the direction of the young, “when they’re so lovely—”

  She too looked at the girl, who was fastening a flower that had come undone in the front of her frock. She smiled. She said nothing. Then half consciously she echoed his question without a meaning in her echo, “Why?”

  He was dashed for a moment. It seemed to him that she refused to help him. And he wanted her to help him. Why should she not take the weight off his shoulders and give him what he longed for — assurance, certainty? Because she too was deformed like the rest of them? He looked down at her hands. They were strong hands; fine hands; but if it were a question, he thought, watching the fingers curl slightly, of “my” children, of “my” possessions, it would be one rip down the belly; or teeth in the soft fur of the throat. We cannot help each other, he thought, we are all deformed. Yet, disagreeable as it was to him to remove her from the eminence upon which he placed her, perhaps she was right, he thought, and we who make idols of other people, who endow this man, that woman, with power to lead us, only add to the deformity, and stoop ourselves.

  “I’m going to stay with them,” he said aloud.

  “At the Towers?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “For cubbing in September.”

  She was not listening. Her eyes were on him. She was getting him into relation with something else he felt. It made him uneasy. She was looking at him as if he were not himself but somebody else. He felt again the discomfort that he had felt when Sally described him on the telephone.

  “I know,” he said, stiffening the muscles of his face, “I’m like the picture of a Frenchman holding his hat.”

  “Holding his hat?” she asked.

  “And getting fat,” he added.

  “. . . Holding a hat . . . who’s holding a hat?” said Eleanor, opening her eyes.

  She glanced about her in bewilderment. Since her last recollection, and it seemed only a second ago, was of Milly talking of candles in a church, something must have happened. Milly and Hugh had been there; but they were gone. There had been a gap — a gap filled with the golden light of lolling candles, and some sensation which she could not name.

  She woke up completely.

  “What nonsense are you talking?” she said. “North’s not holding a hat! And he’s not fat,” she added. “Not at all, not at all,” she repeated, patting him affectionately on the knee.

  She felt extraordinarily happy. Most sleep left some dream in one’s mind — some scene or figure remained when one woke up. But this sleep, this momentary trance, in which the candles had lolled and lengthened themselves, had left her with nothing but a feeling; a feeling, not a dream.

  “He’s not holding a hat,” she repeated.

  They both laughed at her.

  “You’ve been dreaming, Eleanor,” said Maggie.

  “Have I?” she said. A deep gulf had been cut in the talk, it was true. She could not remember what they had been saying. There was Maggie; but Milly and Hugh had gone.

  “Only a second’s nap,” she said. “But what are you going to do, North? What are your plans?” she said, speaking rather quickly.

  “We musn’t let him go back, Maggie,” she said. “Not to that horrid farm.”

  She wished to appear extremely practical, partly to prove that she had not slept, partly to protect the extraordinary feeling of happiness that still remained with her. Covered up from observation it might survive, she felt.

  “You’ve saved enough, haven’t you?” she said aloud.

  “Saved enough?” he said. Why, he wondered, did people who had been asleep always want to make out that they were extremely wide-awake? “Four or five thousand,” he added at random.

  “Well, that’s enough,” she insisted. “Five per cent; six per cent—” She tried to do the sum in her head. She appealed to Maggie for help. “Four or five thousand — how much would that be, Maggie? Enough to live on, wouldn’t it?”

  “Four or five thousand,” repeated Maggie.

  “At five or six per cent . . .” Eleanor put in. She could never do sums in her head at the best of times; but for some reason it seemed to her very important to bring things back to facts. She opened her bag, found a letter, and produced a stubby little pencil.