I Capture the Castle

I hope I see you before I go back home.

Maybe we can swim the moat again. How are the swans?

I shall be tickled to death to have you for a sister-in-law.

Love from

NEIL

I wish he weren't going back to America. He is hoping to get a

partnership in a ranch, Simon told me; somewhere in a California

desert. Deserts do not seem to be deserted in America.

This morning I had a letter from Rose which I will now copy in.

DEAR CASSANDRA

I am sorry not to have written before but we have been very busy.

Getting a trousseau is quite hard work. I think you would be surprised at the way we do it. We hardly go to real shops at all but to large

beautiful houses. There are drawing-rooms with crystal chandeliers and little gilt chairs all round and you sit there and watch the manniquins (can't spell it) walk past in the clothes. You have a card and a

pencil to mark down what you like. The prices are fabulous- quite

plain dresses cost around twenty-five pounds. My black suit will be

thirty-five- more, really, because everything is in guineas, not

pounds. At first I had a frightened sort of feeling at so much being

spent but now it seems almost natural.

I believe my whole trousseau is to cost up to a thousand pounds- and

that will not mean very many things, really, not at the prices we are paying.

But things like fur coats and jewelry will come after I am married.

I already have my engagement ring, of course, a square emerald.

Lovely.

I expect you will wish I would describe everything we have bought but I haven't the time and I also feel embarrassed at having so much when you have so little. But you are to have a most beautiful bridesmaid's

frock- you are to come up to be fitted for it--and I think the

ready-made clothes I am wearing now can be altered for you, once I get my trousseau. And when I am married we will shop like mad for you.

Here is some news that will interest you specially. We dined with the Fox-Cottons and saw Stephen's photographs and, my dear, he looks like all the Greek gods rolled into one. Leda is sure he could get a job

on the pictures, quite seriously. I said it was a scream to think of

him acting and she got quite annoyed. You had better look after your

property. I'm joking- don't do anything silly. I intend to find

someone really exciting for you.

I don't like the Fox-Cottons much. Aubrey makes an awful fuss of

Topaz--he has taken her out several times. She is a conspicuous

person.

She knew some of the manaquins at a dress-show-I could have died. And she knew the photographers at a first-night we went to. Macmorris was there--he looks like a very pale monkey. He wants to paint her again.

Her clothes seem wildly eccentric now we are with well-dressed

people--it's funny to think I used quite to envy them.

I thought of you yesterday. I was out by myself and I went into that

shop where the furs were stored--the clothes there look stodgy after

the ones I've been seeing but they do have nice gloves and things. I

saw the branch of white coral you lost your heart to, and wondered if I could buy it for you but it is only for display. Then I thought I

would buy you a bottle of the scent you said smelt like bluebells but the price is ruinous and I hadn't enough with me--the only pocket-money I have is what Topaz doles out and she is being remarkably cautious

with the beaver coat money, though strictly speaking it is yours and

mine. Mrs.

Cotton spends the earth on me, of course, but hasn't offered anything for me to spend myself--perhaps she thinks it wouldn't be tactful, but it would.

Oh, darling, do you remember how we stood watching the woman buying a whole dozen pairs of silk stockings and you said we were like cats

making longing noises for birds? I think it was that moment I decided I would do anything, anything, to stop being so horribly poor.

It was that night we met the Cottons again. Do you believe one can

make things happen? I do. I had the same sort of desperate feeling

the night I wished on the angel--and look what that did! He is an

angel, all right, not a devil. It's so wonderful that I can be in love with Simon as well as everything else.

Darling Cassandra, I promise you shall never make any more longing cat noises once I am a married woman. And there are other things besides

clothes that I can help you with, you know. I have been wondering if

you would like to go to college (did you know Thomas is to go to

Oxford?) Personally, I think it would be dreary but you might enjoy it as you are so intelligent. My marriage is going to help us all, you

know--even Father. Being away from him has made me more tolerant of

him. Both Simon and Mrs.

Cotton say he really was a great writer. Anyway, it doesn't matter any more that he can't earn any money. Give him my love--and to Thomas and Stephen. I will send them all postcards. This letter is private to

you, of course.

I do wish you were here- I miss you at least a hundred times a day.

I felt so sad being in that shop without you. I shall go back and get you that scent when I have extracted more money from Topaz --it's

called "Midsummer Eve" and you shall have it in time for your goings-on on Belmotte.

Heavens, I'm using pages and pages of Mrs.

Cotton's elegant notepaper, but it feels a bit like talking to you. I meant to tell you all about the theatres but I mustn't start now--it's later than I thought and I have to dress for dinner.

Love and please write often to your Rose.

P.s. I have a bathroom all to myself and there are clean peach-colored towels every single day. Whenever I feel lonely, I go and sit in there till I cheer up.

That is the first letter I ever had from her, as we haven't been

separated since we were very small, when Rose had scarlet fever. It

doesn't sound quite like her, somehow--for one thing, it is much more affectionate; I don't think she has ever called me "darling" before.

Perhaps it is because she is missing me. I do call it a sign of a

beautiful nature if a girl who is in love and surrounded by all that

splendour is lonely for her sister.

Fancy thirty-five guineas for a suit! That is thirty-six pounds

fifteen shillings; I do think shops are artful to price things in

guineas.

I didn't know clothes could cost so much--at that rate, Rose is right when she says a thousand pounds won't buy so very many;

not when you think of all the hats and shoes and underclothes. I had

imagined Rose having dozens and dozens of dresses--you can get such

beauties for two or three pounds each; but perhaps it gives you a

glorious, valuable feeling to wear little black suits of fabulous

price--like wearing real jewelry. Rose and I always felt superb when

we wore our little real old chains with the seed-pearl hearts.

We howled like anything when they had to be sold.

A thousand pounds for clothes--when one thinks how long poor people

could live on it! When one thinks how long we could live on it, for

that matter! Oddly, I have never thought of us as poor people--I mean, I have never been terribly sorry for us, as for the unemployed or

beggars; though really we have been rather worse off, being

unemployable and with no one to beg from.

I don't believe I could look a beggar in the face if my trousseau had cost a thousand pounds ...... Oh, come, Mrs.

Cotton wouldn't give the thousand pounds to beggars if she didn't spend it on Rose, so Rose might as well have it. And I shall certainly be

delighted to accept clothes from Rose. I ought to be ashamed--being

glad the riches won't be on my conscience, while only too willing to

have them on my back.

I meant to copy in a letter from Topaz but it is pinned up in the

kitchen, most of it being instructions for cooking--about which I am

more ignorant than I had realized. We used to manage quite well when

she was away sitting for artists, because in those days we lived mostly on bread, vegetables and eggs; but now that we can afford some meat or even chickens, I keep coming to grief. I scrubbed some rather

dirty-looking chops with soap which proved very lingering, and I did

not take certain things out of a chicken that I ought to have done.

Even keeping the house clean is more complicated than I expected - I

have always helped with it, of course, but never organized it.

I am realizing more and more how hard Topaz worked.

Her letter looks as if it had been written with a stick- she always

uses a very thick, orange quill pen. There are six spelling mistakes.

After the helpful cooking hints, she mentions the theatre first-night they went to and says the play was not "significant" --a word she has just taken up. Aubrey Fox-Cotton's architecture is significant, but

Leda Fox-Cotton's photographs are not--Topaz doubts their ultimate

motivation. Ultimate with two like's.

Dear Topaz! Her letter is exactly like her--three quarters practical

kindness and one quarter spoof. I hope the spoof means she is feeling happier; there has been less and less of it since she has been

worrying about Father.

It must be months since she played her lute or communed with nature.

She finishes by saying she will come home instantly if Father shows

signs of missing her. Unfortunately, he doesn't; and he is far less

irritable than when she was here--though not conversational.

We only see each other at meals; the rest of the day he either walks or shuts himself in the gatehouse (when he leaves it, he now locks the

door and takes the key). I regret to say that he is re-reading Miss

Marcy's entire stock of detective novels.

And he has spent one day in London. While he was gone I told myself it was absurd the way we had all been hypnotized by him not to ask

questions, so when he came back I said cheerfully: "How was the British Museum ?"

"Oh, I haven't been there," he answered, quite pleasantly.

"Today I went to was He broke off, suddenly staring at me as if I were some dangerous animal he had only just noticed;

then he walked out of the room. I longed to call after him: "Father, really! Are you going queer in the head?" But it struck me that if a man is going queer in the head, he is the last person to mention it

to.

That sentence has brought me up with a bang. Do I really believe my

Father is going insane his No, of course not. I even have a faint,

glorious hope that he may be working--he has twice asked for ink. But it is slightly peculiar that he took my colored chalks-what was left of them--and an ancient volume of Little Follggness;

also that he went for a walk carrying an out-of-date Bradshaw railway guide.

His manner is usually normal. And he has been most civil about my

cooking--which is certainly a sign of control.

How arrogant I used to be! I remember writing in this journal that I

would capture Father later--I meant to do a brilliant character sketch.

Capture Father! Why, I don't know anything about anyone! I shouldn't

be surprised to hear that even Thomas is living a double life--though he does seem all homework and appetite. One nice thing is being able

to give him enough to eat at last; I crowd food on to his plate.

And Stephen? No, I can't capture Stephen.

Life does turn out unexpectedly. I was afraid it might be difficult

being alone with him so much--during the long evenings, with Father

shut in the gatehouse and Thomas busy with his lessons. I couldn't

have been more wrong. After tea, he helps me with the washing-up, then we usually garden--but often in quite different parts of the garden

and, anyway, he hardly talks at all.

He hasn't been to London any more and I am sure he hasn't seen the

photographs of himself--I should have known if they had been sent

here.

It is really a very good thing that he seems to have lost interest in me because, feeling like this, I might not have been brisk with him.

Feeling like what, Cassandra Mortmain? Flat?

Depressed?

Empty? If so, why, pray?

I thought if I made myself write I should find out what is wrong with me, but I haven't, so far. Unless- could I possibly be jealous of

Rose?

I will pause and search my innermost soul ...... I have searched it for a solid five minutes. And I swear I am not jealous of Rose; more than that, I should hate to change places with her. Naturally, this is

mainly because I shouldn't like to marry Simon. But suppose I were in love with him, as Rose is his That's too hard to imagine. Then suppose it were Neil- because since he went away I have wondered if I am not

just a little bit in love with him.

All right, I'm in love with Neil and I'm marrying him and he is the

rich one. A thousand pounds is being spent on my trousseau with furs

and jewelry coming later. I am to have a wonderful wedding with

everyone saying: "What a brilliant match that quiet little girl has made." We are going to live at Scoatney Hall with everything we can possibly want and, presumably, lots of the handsomest children. It's

going to be "happy ever after," just like the fairy tales And I still wouldn't like it. Oh, I'd love the clothes and the wedding. I am not

so sure I should like the facts of life, but I have got over the bitter disappointment I felt when I first heard about them, and one obviously has to try them sooner or later.

What I'd really hate would be the settled feeling, with nothing but

happiness to look forward to. Of course no life is perfectly

happy--Rose's children will probably get it, the servants may be

difficult, perhaps dear Mrs. Cotton will prove to be the teeniest fly in the ointment. I should like to know what fly was originally in what ointment.) There are hundreds of worries and even sorrows that may come along, but I think what I really mean is that Rose won't be wanting

things to happen. She will want things to stay just as they are. She

will never have the fun of hoping something wonderful and exciting may be just round the corner.

I daresay I am being very silly but there it is! I

DO NOT ENVY

ROSE. When I imagine changing places with her I get the feeling I do

on finishing a novel with a brick-wall happy ending--I mean the kind of ending when you never think any more about the characters ...... It

seems a long time since I wrote those last words. I have been sitting here staring at Miss Blossom without seeing her, without seeing

anything. Now I am seeing things more clearly than usual-that often

happens after I have been "stuck." The furniture seems almost alive and leaning towards me, like the chair in van Gogh's painting. The two beds, my little jug and basin, the bamboo dressing table--how many

years Rose and I have shared them! We used so scrupulously to keep to our own halves of the dressing-table.

Now there is nothing of hers on it except a pink china ring-stand for which she never had any rings- well, she has one now.

I suddenly know what has been the matter with me all week.

Heavens, I'm not envying Rose, I'm missing her! Not missing her

because she is away now--though I have been a little bit lonely but

missing the Rose who has gone away for ever. There used to be two of

us always on the look-out for life, talking to Miss Blossom at night, wondering, hoping; two Bronte Jane Austen girls, poor but spirited, two Girls of Godsend Castle. Now there is only one, and nothing will ever be quite such fun again.

Oh, how selfish I am--when Rose is so happy! Of course I wouldn't have things different; even on my own account, I am looking forward to

presents--though ...... I wonder if there isn't a catch about having

plenty of money his Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things?

When I think of the joy of my green linen dress after I hadn't had a

new dress for ages!

Will Rose be able to feel anything like that after a few years his One thing I do know: I adore my green linen dress even if it did cost only twenty-five shillings.

"Only" twenty-five shillings! That seemed like a fortune when we bought the dress.

About has just walked in, mewing--it must be teatime;

that cat has a clock in his stomach. Yes--I can hear Stephen talking

to Heloise in the courtyard; and Father shouting through the gatehouse window to know if Thomas has brought him a copy of the Scout.

(now, what can a grown man want with the Scout?) I wonder if Thomas

remembered the kippers Yes, he did- I have just yelled down to him. He often brings us fish from King's Crypt now. Well, it's said to be good or the brain- perhaps it will help Father. Oh, kippers for tea, two

each!

Three, if anyone wants them.

I feel better.

I must go down and feed my family.

XII

I a" Is Midsummer Day- and as beautiful as its name.

I am writing in the attic; I chose it because one can see Belmotte from the window. At first I thought I would sit on the mound, but I saw

that would be too much- there I should keep re-living it all instead of writing about it. And I must set it down today so that I shall have it for ever, intact and lovely, untouched by the sadness that is

coming--for, of course it is coming; my brain tells me that.

I thought it would have come by this morning but it hasn't-oh, so much it hasn't that I can't quite believe it ever will!

Is it wrong of me to feel so happy his Perhaps I ought even to feel

guilty his No. I didn't make it happen, and it can't hurt anyone but

me. Surely I have a right to my joy? For as long as it lasts .... It

is like a flowering in the heart, a stirring of wings oh if only I

could write poetry, as I did when I was a child! I have tried, but

the words were as cheap as a sentimental song.

So I tore them up. I must set it down simply--everything that happened to me yesterday with no airs and graces. But I long to be a poet, to

pay tribute .... My lovely day began when the sun rose--I often wake

then but usually I go to sleep again. Yesterday I instantly remembered that it was Midsummer Eve, my very favorite day, and lay awake looking forward to it and planning my rites on the mound. They seemed all the more valuable because I wondered if it might not be my last year for

them--I didn't feel as if it would, but Rose outgrew them when she was about my age. And I agree with her that it would be dreadful to

perform them just as an affected pose; they were a bit peculiar last

year when Topaz kindly assisted me and went very pagan. The nicest

times of all were when Rose and I were young enough to feel rather

frightened.

We first held the rites when I was nine- I got the idea from a book on folklore. Mother thought them unsuitable for Christian little girls (I remember my astonishment at being called a Christian) and she was

worried in case our dresses caught alight when we danced round our

votive fire. She died the following winter and the next Midsummer Eve we had a much bigger fire; and while we were piling more wood on, I

suddenly thought of her and wondered if she could see us. I felt

guilty, not only because of the fire, but because I no longer missed

her and was enjoying myself. Then it was time for the cake and I was

glad that I could have two pieces-she would only have allowed one; but in the end I only took one.

Stephen's mother always made us a beautiful Midsummer cake-the whole

family got some of it, but Rose and I never let the others join in our rites on the mound; though after the year we saw the Shape, Stephen

took to hanging about in the courtyard in case we called for help.

As I lay in bed watching the sun climb out of the wheat field

yesterday, I tried to remember all our Midsummer Eves, in their proper order. I got as far as the year it poured and we tried to light a fire under an umbrella. Then I drifted back into sleep again --the most

beautiful, hazy, light sleep. I dreamt I was on Belmotte Tower at

sunrise and all around me was a great golden lake, stretching as far as I could see. There was nothing of the castle left at all, but I didn't seem to mind in the least.

While I was getting breakfast, Stephen told me that he wouldn't be in to lunch, as he usually is on Saturdays, because he was going to London to sit for Mrs. Fox-Cotton again.

"She wants to start work the very first thing tomorrow," he explained,

"so I'm to go up today and sleep the night there."

I asked if he had anything to pack his clothes in and he showed me a

moth-eaten carpet-bag that had belonged to his Mother.

"Gracious, you can't use that," I told him.

"I'll lend you my attache case--it's big enough."

"It'll be that, all right," he said, grinning. I found he was only taking his nightshirt, his safety-razor, a toothbrush and a comb.

"Couldn't you buy yourself a dressing-gown, Stephen -out of the five guineas you earned last time ?"

He said he had other things to do with that.

"Well, out of your wages, then. There's no need to hand them over now we have two hundred pounds."

But he said he couldn't make any change without discussing it with

Topaz.

"Maybe she'll be counting on me. And two hundred pounds won't last for ever. Don't you go feeling rich, it isn't safe."

In the end he agreed to think about getting a dressing-gown, but I knew he was only saying it to please me. No --I expect he just said it to

end the argument; he has given up trying specially to please me. And, no doubt, it is a very good thing.

He had barely left the house when Father came down, wearing his best

suit- he, too, was off to London, and for several days, if you

please!

"Where will you stay--with the Cottons?" I ventured-"ventured" being the way I ask him all questions these days.

"What where his Yes, I daresay I might. That's a very good idea. Any messages for the girls his Don't speak for a minute."

I stared at him in astonishment. He had picked up a plate from the

table and was examining it carefully--just a cracked old willow pattern plate I had found in the hen-house and brought in to relieve the

crockery shortage.

"Interesting, quite a possibility," he said at last then walked out to the gatehouse, taking the plate with him. After a few minutes he came back without it and started his breakfast.

I could see he was preoccupied, but I did want to know about that

plate. I asked if it was valuable.

"Might be, might be," he said, staring in front of him.

"Do you know anyone who would buy it?"

"Buy it his Don't be silly. And don't talk."

I gave it up.

There was the usual scrimmage to get him off in time to catch the

train. I wheeled his bicycle out for him and stood waiting in the

courtyard.

"Where are your things for the night?" I asked as he came out towards me empty-handed.

He looked faintly startled, then said: "Oh, well--I couldn't manage a suitcase on the bicycle. I'll do without. Hello--" He caught sight of Stephen's carpet-bag--I had thrown it out of the kitchen because it was crawling with moth-grubs.

"Now, that. I could use--I could sling it across the handlebars.

Quick, get my things!"

I began to point out the awfulness of the bag but he chivvied me

indoors, shouting instructions after me- so that I heard "Pyjamas!"

as I went across the kitchen, "Shaving tackle, on the kitchen stairs and "Toothbrush, handkerchiefs and a clean shirt if I have one!"

as I rummaged round his bedroom. By the time I reached the bathroom

there came a roar: "That's enough--come back at once or I shall miss my train." But when I rushed down to him he seemed to have forgotten there was any hurry- he was sitting on the backdoor step studying the carpetbag.

"This is most interesting pseudo-Persian," he began- then sprang up shouting: "Great Heaven, give me those things!" Godsend church striking the half had brought him back to earth.

He shoved everything into the bag, hung it on his bicycle and rode off full-tilt, mangling the corner of a flower-bed. At the gatehouse, he

suddenly braked, flung himself off and dashed up the tower stairs,

leaving the bicycle so insecurely placed that it slid to the ground. By the time I had run across and picked it up, he was coming down carrying the willow-pattern plate. He pushed it into the carpet-bag, then

started off again--pedaling frantically, with the bag thumping against his knees. At the first bend of the lane he turned his head sharply

and shouted:

"Good-bye"--very nearly falling off the bicycle. Then he was gone.

Never have I known him so spasmodic--or have I? Wasn't he rather like that in the days when his temper was violent his As I walked back to

the house, it dawned on me that I was going to be alone for the

night--Thomas was spending the weekend with Harry, his friend at

school. For a second, I had a dismayed, deserted feeling but I soon

convinced myself there was nothing to be frightened of-we hardly ever get tramps down our lane and when we do they are often very nice;

anyway, Heloise is a splendid watchdog.

Once I got used to the idea of being by myself for so long I positively liked it. I always enjoy the different feeling there is in a house

when one is alone in it, and the thought of that feeling stretching

ahead for two whole days somehow intensified it wonderfully. The

castle seemed to be mine in a way it never had been before; the day

seemed specially to belong to me; I even had a feeling that I owned

myself more than I usually do. I became very conscious of all my

movements- if I raised my arm I looked at it wonderingly, thinking,

"That is mine!" And I took pleasure in moving, both in the physical effort and in the touch of the air--it was most queer how the air did seem to touch me, even when it was absolutely still. All day long I

had a sense of great ease and spaciousness. And my happiness had a

strange, remembered quality as though I had lived it before. Oh, how

can I recapture it- that utterly right, homecoming sense of recognition his It seems to me now that the whole day was like an avenue leading

to a home I had loved once but forgotten, the memory of which was

coming back so dimly, so gradually, as I wandered along, that only when my home at last lay before me did I cry: "Now I know why I have been happy!"

How words weave spells! As I wrote of the avenue, it rose before my

eyes- I can see it now, lined with great smooth-trunked trees whose

branches meet far above me. The still air is flooded with peace, yet

somehow expectant- as it seemed to me once when I was in King's Crypt cathedral at sunset. On and on I wander, beneath the vaulted roof of

branch and leaf .. . and all the time, the avenue is yesterday, that

long approach to beauty.

Images in the mind, how strange they are ...... I have been gazing at the sky I never saw it a brighter blue. Great featherbed clouds are

billowing across the sun, their edges brilliant silver. The whole day is silvery, sparkling, the birds sound shrill ...... Yesterday was

golden, even in the morning the light was softly drowsy, all sounds

seemed muted.

By ten o'clock I had finished all my jobs and was wondering what to do with the morning. I strolled round the garden, watched thrush on the

lawn listening for worms and finally came to rest on the grassy bank of the moat. When I dabbled my hand in the shimmering water it was so

much warmer than I expected that I decided to bathe. I swam round the castle twice, hearing the Handel "Water Music" in my head.

While I was hanging my bathing-suit out of the bedroom window, I had a sudden longing to lie in the sun with nothing on. I never felt it

before--Topaz has always had a monopoly of nudity in our household- but the more I thought of it, the more I fancied it. And I had the

brilliant idea of doing my sunbathing on the top of the bedroom tower, where nobody working in the fields or wandering up our lane could

possibly see me. It felt most peculiar crawling naked up the cold,

rough stone steps-exciting in some mysterious way I couldn't explain to myself. Coming out at the top was glorious, warmth and light fell

round me like a great cape. The leads were so hot that they almost

burnt the soles of my feet; I was glad I had thought of bringing up a blanket to spread.

It was beautifully private. That tower is the best-preserved of them

all; the circle of battlements is complete, though there are a few deep cracks--a marigold had seeded in one of them. Once I lay down flat I

couldn't even see the battlements without turning my head. There was

nothing left but the sun-filled dome of the cloudless sky.

What a difference there is between wearing even the skimpiest

bathing-suit and wearing nothing! After a few minutes I seemed to live in every inch of my body as fully as I usually do in my head and my

hands and my heart. I had the fascinating feeling that I could think

as easily with my limbs as with my brain--and suddenly the whole of me thought that Topaz's nonsense about communing with nature isn't

nonsense at all. The warmth of the sun felt like enormous hands

pressing gently on me, the flutter of the air was like delicate

fingers. My kind of nature-worship has always had to do with magic and folklore, though sometimes it turned a bit holy.

This was nothing like that. I expect it was what Topaz means by

"pagan." Anyway, it was thrilling.

But my front got so terribly hot. And when I rolled over on to my

stomach I found that the back of me was not so interested in communing with nature. I began to think with my brain only, in the normal way,

and it felt rather shut inside itself-probably because having nothing but the roof to stare at was very dull. I started to listen to the

silence- never have I known such a silent morning. No dog barked, no

hen clucked; strangest of all, no birds sang. I seemed to be in a

soundless globe of heat. The thought had just struck me that I might

have gone deaf, when I heard a tiny bead of sound, tap, tap- I couldn't imagine what it could be.

Plop, plop- I solved it: my bathing-suit dripping into the moat. Then a bee zoomed into the marigold, close to my ear--and then suddenly it was as if all the bees of the summer world were humming high in the

sky.

sprang up and saw an airplane coming nearer and nearer--so I made for the stairs and sat there with just my head out. The plane flew quite

low over the castle, and the ridiculous idea came to me that I was a

mediaeval de Godys lady seeing a flying man across the centuries--and perhaps hoping he was a lover coming to win her.

After that the medieval lady groped her way downstairs and put on her shift.

Just as I finished dressing, the postman came through to the courtyard, calling: "Anyone home?" He had a parcel--for me!

Rose had gone back and ordered the "Midsummer Eve" scent; I thought she had forgotten. Oh, it was a fascinating present! Inside the outer

wrapping was another- white, with colored flowers on it--and inside

that was a blue box that felt velvety, and inside that was a glass

bottle engraved with a moon and stars, and inside that was pale green scent. The stopper was fastened down with silver wire and silver

seals. At first I thought I would open it at once;

then I decided to make the opening a prelude to the rites, something to look forward to all day. So I stood the bottle on the half of the

dressing-table that used to be Rose's and sent her waves of thanks-I

meant to write to her after my "goings-on on Belmotte," as she called them, and tell her I had worn the scent for them. Oh, why didn't I

write at once his What can I say to her now his .... I was hungry but I didn't feel like cooking, so I had the most beautiful lunch of cold

baked beans--what bliss it is that we can now afford things in tins

again! I had bread-and-butter, too, and lettuce and cold rice pudding and two slices of cake (real shop cake) and milk. Hcl and About sat on the table and were given treats--they had had their own dinners, of

course. They both took to baked beans at once--there is precious

little they don't take to, Heloise even accepted salted lettuce.

(during our famine period she became practically a vegetarian.) Then, all three of us very full, we had a sleep in the four-poster, About

curled up at the foot and Hcl with her back against my chest, which was rather hot but always gives one a companionable feeling.

We slept for hours--I don't think I ever slept so long in the day time; I felt terribly guilty when I woke up and found it was nearly four

o'clock. Hcl thumped her tail as if I had just come back from

somewhere and About gave us a look as if he had never seen either of us before in his life--after which he jumped off the bed, did a little

claw-sharpening on Miss Blossom's solitary leg and then went

downstairs. When I looked out across the courtyard a few minutes later he was high on the curtain walls with one leg pointing to heaven, doing some strenuous washing. It gave me the idea of washing my hair.

After that, it was time to gather flowers for the rites.

They have to be wild flowers--I can't remember if that is traditional or if Rose and I made it up: mallow, campion and bluebells for the

garland to hang round our necks, foxgloves to carry, and we always wore wild roses in our hair. Even since Rose has given up the rites she has sometimes come out for the garland-gathering --I kept talking to her

yesterday and hearing her answer; it made me miss her more than ever, so I talked to Heloise instead. We had the most peaceful,

companionable walk along the lane and through the fields, with Heloise carrying the flower-basket for several seconds at a time, the whole

back half of her waggling with pride. I was glad to find there were

still plenty of bluebells in the larch wood. One of the nicest sights I know is Heloise smelling a bluebell with her long, white,

naked-looking nose. How can people say bull terriers are ugly? Heloise is exquisite--though she has put on a bit too much weight, these last opulent weeks.

I gave the flowers a long drink- wild ones die so quickly without water that I never make my garland before seven o'clock.

By then I had collected enough twigs to start the fire -Stephen always takes the logs up for me--and packed my basket. When I finished my

garland, it was nearly eight and a pale moon was coming up though the sky was still blue. I changed into my green linen frock and put on my garland and wild roses; then, at the very last minute, I opened Rose's scent.

One deep sniff and I was back in the rich shop where the furs were

stored--oh, it was a glorious smell! But the odd thing was, it no

longer reminded me of bluebells. I waved a little about on a

handkerchief and managed to capture them for a second, but most of the time there was just a mysterious, elusive sweetness that stood for

London and luxury. It killed the faint wild-flower scents and I knew

it would spoil the lovely smell that comes from Belmotte grass after a hot day; so I decided not to wear any for the rites. I took one last

sniff, then ran down to the kitchen for the sack of twigs and the

basket and started off. I was glad Heloise wasn't there to follow me, because she always wants to eat the ceremonial cake.

There wasn't a breath of wind as I climbed the mound. The sun was

down- usually I begin the rites by watching it sink, but trying the

scent had taken longer than I realized. The sky beyond Belmotte Tower was a watery yellow with one streak of green across it- vivid green,

most magically beautiful. But it faded quickly, it was gone by the

time I reached the stones we placed to encircle the fire. I watched

until the yellow faded, too--then turned towards the moon still low

over the wheat field. The blue all around her had deepened so much

that she no longer looked pale, but like masses of luminous snow.

The peace was so great that it seemed like a soft, thick substance

wrapped closely round me making it hard to move;

but when the church clock struck nine, I stirred at last.

I emptied the sack of twigs into the circle of stones and put on the

small logs that Stephen had left ready. He had brought some long,

slender branches too, so I set them up over the logs like the poles of a wigwam. Then I well to the tower for my need fire Real need fire-from which Midsummer fires should be lit--can only be made by rubbing two pieces of wood together;

but when first we planned the rites, Rose and I spent an hour at this without raising so much as a spark. So we decided it would be pagan

enough if we took matches to the tower and lit a taper.

Then Rose carried it out and I followed, waving foxgloves.

We were always fascinated that such a tiny flame could make the

twilight seem deeper and so much more blue--we thought of that as the beginning of the magic; and it was tremendously important that the

taper shouldn't blow out as we came down the tower steps and crossed

the mound--on breezy nights we used a lamp glass to protect it.

Last night was so still that I scarcely needed to shelter it with my

hand.

Once the fire is blazing the countryside fades into the dusk, so I took one last look round the quiet fields, sorry to let them go. Then I lit the twigs. They caught quickly--I love those early minutes of a fire, the crackles and snappings, the delicate flickers, the first sharp

whiff of smoke. The logs were slow to catch so I lay with my head near the ground, and blew. Suddenly the flames raced up the wigwam of

branches and I saw the snowy moon trapped in a fiery cage. Then smoke swept over her as the logs caught at last. I scrambled up, and sat

back watching them blaze high. All my thoughts seemed drawn into the

fire- to be burning with it in the brightly lit circle of stones. The whole world seemed filled with hissing and crackling and roaring.

And then, far off in the forgotten dusk, someone called my name.

"Cassandra!"" Did it come from the lane--or from the castle? And whose voice was it? Dead still, I waited for it to call again, trying to

shut my ears to the fire noises. Had it been a man's voice or a

woman's his When I tried to remember it I only heard the fire. After a few seconds I began to think I must have imagined it.

Then Heloise began barking, the way she barks when somebody arrives.

I ran across the mound and peered down. At first my eyes were too full of the flames to see anything clearly, then gradually the pale light of evening spread round me again; but I couldn't see into the lane or the courtyard because a thick mist was rising from the moat.

Heloise sounded so frantic that I decided to go down. Just as I

started off, she stopped barking--and then, floating across the mist, came the voice again: "Cas-sandra--a long, drawn-out call. This time I knew it was a man's voice but I still couldn't recognize it. I was

sure it wasn't Father's or Stephen's or Thomas's. It was a voice that had never called me before.

"Here I am" I called back.

"Who is it?"

Someone was moving through the mist, crossing the bridge.

Heloise came racing ahead, very pleased with herself.

"Why, of course--it'll be Neil!" I thought suddenly, and started to run down to meet him. Then at last I saw clearly. It wasn't Neil.

It was Simon.

Oh, strange to remember- I wasn't pleased to see him! I had wanted it to be Neil--if it had to be anyone at all when I was just starting the rites. I wouldn't blame anybody who caught a grown girl at them for

thinking her "consciously naive."

As we shook hands, I made up my mind to take him indoors without

referring to the fire. But he looked up at it and said:

"I'd forgotten it was Midsummer Eve--Rose told me about the fun you always have. How pretty your garland is."

Then, somehow, we were walking up the mound together.

He had driven down to see the Scoatney agent;

had been working with him all day: "Then I thought I'd come and call on you and your Father--is he out? There are no lights in the castle."

I explained about Father- and said he might possibly have turned up at the flat.

"Then he'll have to sleep in my room--we're like sardines in that apartment. What a glorious blaze!"

As we sat down I wondered how much Rose had told him about the rites--I hoped he only knew that we lit a fire for them. Then I saw him look at the basket.

"How's Rose ?" I asked quickly, to distract him from it.

"Oh, she's fine--she sent you her love, of course. So did Topaz.

Is this the Vicar's port that Rose told me about ?"

The medicine bottle was sticking right out of the basket.

"Yes, he gives me a little every year," I said, feeling most selfconscious.

"Do we drink it or make a libation ?"

"We?"

"Oh, I'm going to celebrate too. I shall represent Rose--even if she does feel too old for it."

Suddenly I stopped feeling self-conscious. It came to me that Simon

was one of the few people who would really find Midsummer rites

romantic--that he'd see them as a link with the past and that they

might even help with those English roots he wants to strike.

So I said: "All right--that'll be lovely," and began to unpack the basket.

He watched with much interest: "Rose never told me about the packet of cooking herbs. What are they for ?"

"We burn them--they're a charm against witchcraft.

Of course they oughtn't to be shop herbs--they should have been

gathered by moonlight. But I don't know where to find any that smell

nice."

He said I must get them from the Scoatney herb-garden in future:

"It'll be grateful to be used, after being a dead failure in salads.

What's the white stuff?"

"That's salt- it wards off bad luck. And turns the flames a lovely blue."

"And the cake ?"

"Well, we show that to the fire before we eat it. Then we drink wine and throw a few drops into the flames."

"And then you dance round the fire ?"

I told him I was much too old for that.

"Not on your life, you're not," said Simon.

"I'll dance with you."

I didn't tell him about the verses I usually say, because I made them up when I was nine and they are too foolish for words.

The high flames were dying down; I could see we should need more

kindling if we were to keep the fire spectacular.

I had noticed some old wood in the tower--a relic of the days when we often had picnics on the mound. I asked Simon to help me get it.

As we came to the tower he stood still for a moment, looking up at its height against the sky.

"How tall is it ?"

he asked.

"It must be seventy or eighty feet, surely."

"Sixty," I told him.

"It looks taller because it's so solitary."

"It reminds me of a picture I once saw called "The Sorcerer's Tower."

Can you get to the top?"

"Thomas did, a few years ago, but it was very dangerous; and the upper part of the staircase has crumbled a lot more since then. Anyway,

there's no place to get out on, if you do get to the top--the roof went hundreds of years ago. Come in and see."

We went up the long outside flight of stone steps that leads to the

entrance and climbed down the ladder inside. When we looked up at the circle of sky far above us it was still pale blue, yet filled with

stars--it seemed strange to see them there when scarcely any had been visible outside.

Enough light came down through the open door for Simon to look around.

I showed him the beginning of the spiral staircase, which is stowed

away in a sort of bulge. (it is up there that I hide this journal.) He asked what was through the archway that leads to the opposite bulge.

"Nothing, now," I told him.

"It's where the garde robes used to be." They should really be called privy chambers or latrines, but garde robes are more mentionable.

"How many floors were there originally ?"

"Three--you can see the staircase outlets to them.

There was an entrance floor, a chamber above it and a dungeon below

--here, where we are."

"I bet they enjoyed sitting feasting while the prisoners clanked in chains below."

I told him they probably feasted somewhere else-there must have been

much more of Belmotte Castle once, though no other traces remain: "Most likely this was mainly a watch tower. Mind you don't bump into the

bedstead."

The bedstead was there when we first came--a double one, rather fancy, now a mass of rusty iron. Father meant to have it moved but when he

saw it with the cow-parsley growing through it, stretching up to the

light, he took a fancy to it. Rose and I found it useful to sit

on--Mother was always complaining because our white knickers got marked with rust rings from its spirals.

"It's pure Surrealist," said Simon, laughing.

"I can never understand why there are so many derelict iron bedsteads lying about in the country."

I said it was probably because they last so long, while other rubbish just molders away.

"What a logical girl you are--I could never have worked that out." He was silent for a moment, staring up into the dim heights of the tower.

A late bird flew across the circle of stars and fluttered down to its nest in a high arrow-slit.

"Can you get it--the feeling of people actually having lived here ?" he said at last.

I knew just what he meant.

"I used to try to, but they always seemed like figures in tapestry, not human men and women. It's so far back. But it must mean something to

you that one of your ancestors built the tower. It's a pity the de

Godys name died out."

"I'd call my eldest son "Etienne de Godys Cotton," if I thought he could get by with it in England--would you say he could his It'd

certainly slay any American child."

I said I feared it would slay any child in any country. Then Heloise

appeared above us in the doorway, which reminded us to go on with our job of getting wood.

I dragged it out from under the rustic table and handed each branch to Simon, who stood half-way up the ladder- the technique Rose and I

always used came back to me. When I climbed the ladder at last, Simon helped me out and said: "Look-there's magic for you."

The mist from the moat was rolling right up Belmotte;

already the lower slopes were veiled.

I said: "It's like the night when we saw the Shape."

"The what ?"

I told him about it as we carried the branches to the fire: "It

happened the third year we held the rites, after a very hot, windless day like today. As the mist came towards us, it suddenly formed into a giant shape as high as--oh, higher than--the tower. It hung there

between us and the castle; it seemed to be falling forward over us--I never felt such terror in my life.

And the queer thing was that neither of us tried to run away; we

screamed and flung our selves face downwards before it. It was an

elemental, of course- I'd been saying a spell to raise one."

He laughed and said it must have been some freak of the mist:

"You poor kids! What happened then?"

"I prayed to God to take it away and He very obligingly did-Rose was brave enough to look up after a minute or two and it had vanished. I

felt rather sorry for it afterwards; I daresay no one had summoned it since the Ancient Britons."

Simon laughed again, then looked at me curiously: "You don't, by any chance, still believe it was an elemental ?"

Do I his I only know that just then I happened to look down towards the oncoming mist-its first rolling rush was over and it was creeping

thinly--and suddenly the memory of that colossal shape came back so

terrifyingly that I very nearly screamed. I managed a feeble laugh

instead and began to throw wood on the fire so that I could let the

subject drop.

Rose believed it was an elemental, too--and she was nearly fourteen

then and far from fanciful.

When the fire was blazing high again I felt we had better get the rites over. My self-consciousness about them had come back a little so I

was as matter-of-fact as possible; I must say leaving out the verses

made things rather dull. We burnt the salt and the herbs (in America

it is correct to drop the h in herbs-it does sound odd) and shared the cake with Heloise; Simon only had a very small piece because he was

full of dinner. Then we drank the Vicar's port--there was only one

wineglass so Simon had his out of the medicine bottle, which he said

added very interesting overtones; and then we made our libations, with an extra one for Rose. I hoped we could leave things at that, but

Simon firmly reminded me about dancing round the fire. In the end, we just ran round seven times, with Heloise after us, barking madly. It

was the smallest bit as if Simon were playing with the children, but I know he didn't mean it, and he was so very kind that I felt I had to

pretend I was enjoying myself--I even managed a few wild leaps.

Topaz is the girl for leaping; last year she nearly shook the mound.

"What now ?" asked Simon when we flopped down at last.

"Don't we sacrifice Heloise?" At the moment, she was trying to give us tremendous washings, delighted to have caught us after her long chase.

I said:

"If we drove her across the embers it would cure her of murrain, but she doesn't happen to have it. There's nothing more, except that I

usually sit still while the flames die down and try to think myself

back into the past."

Of course that was very much in Simon's line, but we didn't get very

far into the past because we kept talking. One thing he said was that he would never get used to the miracle of the long English twilight.

It had never before struck me that we have long twilights Americans do seem to say things which make the English notice England.

A carpet of mist had crept to within a few feet of us, then crept no

further- Simon said I must be putting a spell on it. Down by the moat it had mounted so high that only the castle towers rose clear of it.

The fire died quickly, soon there was nothing but gray smoke drifting in the gray dusk. I asked Simon if we were seeing by the last of the

daylight or the first of the moonlight- and really it was hard to tell.

Then gradually the moonlight won and the mist shrouding the castle

turned silver.

"Could anyone paint that?" said Simon.

"Debussy could have done it in music. Are you fond of him ?"

I had to admit that I'd never heard a note of Debussy.

"Oh, surely you must have. Not on records or the radio?"

When I told him we had neither a gramophone nor a wireless he looked

staggered- I suppose Americans find it hard to believe there is anyone in the world without such things.

He told me they had a new machine at Scoatney that changed its own

records- I thought he was joking till he began to explain how it

worked. He finished by saying: "But why don't I drive you over to hear it now his We'll have some supper."

"But you said you were full of dinner," I reminded him.

"Well, I'll talk to you while you eat. And Heloise can have a bone in the kitchen. Look at her trying to rub the dew off her nose with her

paws! Come on, this grass is getting very damp." He pulled me to my feet.

I was glad to accept because I was fabulously hungry. Simon stamped

out the dying embers while I went up to close the door of the tower. I stood at the top of the steps for a moment, trying to capture the

feelings I usually have on Midsummer Eve--for I had been too occupied in entertaining Simon to think about them before. And suddenly I knew that I had been right in fearing this might be my last year for the

rites--that if I ever held them again I should be "playing with the children:" I only felt the smallest pang of sadness, because the glory of supper at Scoatney was stretching ahead of me; but I said to myself that, Simon or no Simon, I was going to give the farewell calla

farewell for ever this time, not just for a year. The call is a queer wordless cry made up of all the vowel sounds--it was thrilling when

Rose and I used to make it together, but I do it fairly well by

myself.

"Ayieou!" I called-and it echoed back from the castle walls as I knew it would. Then Heloise raised her head and howled- and that echoed,

too. Simon was fascinated; he said it was the best moment of the

rites.

Walking down Belmotte was the oddest sensation--every step took us

deeper into the mist until at last it closed over our heads. It was

like being drowned in the ghost of water.

"You'd better get a coat," said Simon as we crossed the bridge to the courtyard, "because the car's open. I'll wait for you in it."

I ran upstairs to wash my hands; they were dirty from handling the

wood. And I put some of the "Midsummer Eve" scent on my dress and handkerchief--it seemed just right for a supper party.

My garland was still fresh so I wore it outside my coat, but as I

hurried downstairs I decided it might look affected and it would

certainly be longing for a drink; so I dropped it into the moat as I

crossed the drawbridge.

It wasn't the usual Scoatney car but a new one, very long and low--so low that one feels one is going to bump one's behind on the road.

"I think it's a bit too spectacular," said Simon, "but Rose lost her heart to it."

The night was beautifully clear once we were well away from the castle-we looked back at it from the high part of the Godsend road and could only see a little hill of mist rising from the moonlit wheat fields.

"If you ask me, it's bewitched," said Simon.

"Maybe when I bring you back we shall find it's gone for keeps." The new car was fascinating to drive in. Our eyes were on a level with the steep banks below the hedges and every spear of grass stood out

brilliantly green in the headlights, seeming more alive than even in

the brightest sunshine. We had to go very slowly because of rabbits-

Heloise kept trying to go headfirst through the windscreen after them.

One poor creature ran in front of us for such a long time that Simon

finally stopped the car and turned the headlights off, so that it could summon up the strength of mind to dive into a ditch. While we waited

he lit a cigarette, and then we leaned back looking up at the stars and talking about astronomy, and space going on for ever and ever and how very worrying that is.

"And of course there's eternity," I began- then Godsend church struck ten and Simon said we must make up for lost time.

There were very few lights on at Scoatney -- I suddenly wondered if all the servants would be in bed; but the butler came out to meet us. How extraordinary it must be to be able to tell a large, imposing man

"Just bring a tray of supper for Miss Mortmain to the pavilion, will you ?"-without even apologizing for giving trouble so late at night- I apologized myself, and the butler said:

"Not at all, miss," but rather distantly. As he stalked away after Heloise (she knows her way to the kitchen now) it struck me that he

would soon be Rose's butler. I wondered if she would ever get used to him.

We crossed the dim hall and went out at the back of the house.

"Here are your herbs by moonlight," said Simon, "and did you notice how carefully I put my aitch in?"

He led the way through the rather dull little herb-garden- the idea of herbs is so much more exciting than the look of them--into the

water-garden, and turned on the fountains in the middle of the big oval pool.

We sat on a stone bench watching them for a few minutes, then went into the pavilion. Simon only lit one candle- I'll put it out when I start the phonograph," he said.

"Then you can still see the fountains while you listen to Debussy--they go well together."

I sat down by one of the three tall, arched windows and peered around; I hadn't been in the pavilion since it had been turned into a music

room. A large grand piano had arrived as well as the wonderful

gramophone, and dozens of albums of records were arranged on the

shelves of two painted cupboards. Simon walked along with the candle, looking for the Debussy albums.

"I suppose we ought to start you right at the beginning," he said, "but I don't believe we have anything from "The Children's Corner."

I'll try "Clair de Lune" on you- and I bet you'll find you know it."

He was right--as soon as it began I remembered; a girl once played it at a school concert. It is beautiful-and the gramophone was amazing,

it might have been someone really playing the piano, only much better than I ever heard a piano played. Then the record changed all by

itself--Simon called me away from the window to watch it, and told me about the next piece, "La Cathedrale Engloutie." You hear the drowned cathedral rise with its bells ringing, then sink into the sea again.

"Now you know why I said Debussy could have composed the castle in the mist," Simon told me.

The third record was "La Terrasse des Audiences au Clair de Lune." It was wonderful to watch the fountains while I listened to it --there

were fountains in the music, too.

"Well, Debussy's certainly made a hit with you," said Simon, "though I'm not sure you wouldn't outgrow him. You're the kind of child who

might develop a passion for Bach."

I told him I hadn't at school. The one Bach piece I learnt made me

feel I was being repeatedly hit on the head with a teaspoon. But I

never got very far with my music--the money for lessons ran out when I was twelve.

"I'll find you some Bach that you'll like," said Simon. He lit the candle again and began to hunt through a big album. The gramophone had stopped playing. I went over to the cupboards and looked at the backs of the albums--even to read the names of the composers was exciting.

"You shall hear them all in time," Simon told me.

"I'd like to try some really modern stuff on you. What a pity Rose doesn't like music."

I turned to him in astonishment.

"But she does!

She plays much better than I do- she sings, too."

"All the same, she doesn't really like it," he said firmly.

"I took her to a concert and she looked quite wretched with boredom.

Ah, here's your supper."

It came on a silver tray, and the butler spread a lace cloth on a

little table for it. There was jellied soup, cold chicken (all

breast), fruit and wine--and lemonade in case I didn't like the wine

but I did.

Simon told the butler to light all the candles and he went round to the crystal wall-brackets with a taper in a long holder- it made me feel I was back in the eighteenth century.

"I'm determined not to have electricity in here," said Simon.

When the butler had poured out wine for us both, Simon told him he

needn't wait- I was glad because he would have made me feel I ought to bolt my supper. His name, by the way, is Graves, but I have never yet brought myself to call him by it in the nonchalant way one should.

Simon had found the record he wanted.

"But it must wait until afterwards- I'm not going to let you eat your way through Bach."

He put on some dance records and turned the gramophone very low; then came back and sat at the table with me.

"Tell me about Rose," I said--for it suddenly came to me that I had asked very little about her. I had been self-centered.

He talked about the trousseau and how much admired Rose is

everywhere.

"Topaz is, too, of course--and my Mother's a pretty good-looker. When the three of them go out together, well, it's something."

I said they needed me to bring the average down--and instantly wished that I hadn't. That kind of a remark simply asks for a compliment.

Simon laughed and told me not to fish.

"You're far prettier than any girl who's so intelligent has a right to be.

As a matter of fact" --he sounded faintly surprised--"you're very pretty indeed."

I said: "I think I'm a bit better-looking when Rose isn't around."

He laughed again.

"Well, you're certainly very pretty tonight."

Then he raised his glass to me, as I once saw him raise it to Rose.

I felt myself blushing and hastily changed the conversation.

"Have you been doing any writing lately ?" I asked.

He said he had begun a critical essay on Father, but couldn't bring

himself to finish it--"There seems no way of not drawing attention to his inactivity. If only one could give the faintest hint that he had

something in hand .. . I For a moment I thought of telling him of my

hopes, but it would have meant describing Father's recent behavior; and the idea of putting into words things like his reading Little Folls and studying willow-pattern plates made me realize how very peculiar they are.

So I let Simon go on talking about his essay, which sounded very much over my head. He must be terribly clever.

When I finished my magnificent chicken, he peeled a peach for me--I was glad, because it is a job I make a mess of; Simon did it beautifully. I noticed what very fine hands he has, and then I suddenly saw what Topaz meant when she once said that all his lines were good. He was wearing a white silk shirt-he had taken his coat off--and the line of his

shoulders seemed exactly right with the line of his jaw (how wise Rose was to get rid of that beard!). I had the oddest feeling that I was

drawing him- I knew exactly how I would do the little twist of his

eyebrows, the curve where his lips pressed together as he concentrated on the peach.

And as I drew each stroke in imagination, I felt it delicately traced on my own face, shoulders, arms and hands--even the folds of the shirt when I drew them seemed to touch me. But the drawn lines made no

picture before my eyes- I still saw him as he was, in the flickering

candlelight.

I had eaten the peach and was drinking the last of my wine when the

gramophone began a most fascinating tune. I asked what it was

called.

"This?

"Lover," I believe," said Simon.

"Do you want to dance once his Then I must take you home."

He went to turn the gramophone up a little, then came back for me. I

had never danced with him before and was rather nervous. I found it quite difficult that time I danced with Neil. To my surprise, it was far

easier with Simon; he holds one more loosely, it seems more casual, I had a feeling of ease and lightness. After the first few seconds, I

stopped worrying about following his steps-my feet took care of it on their own. The odd thing is that Neil helps one to follow far more,

almost forces one to. Never did I feel any pressure from Simon's

hold.

The "Lover" record was the last of the stack, so the gramophone stopped at the end. We were close enough for Simon to re-start it without

taking his arm from my waist; then we danced the tune through again

without saying one word--indeed, we never spoke all the time we were

dancing. I can't remember that I even thought.

I seemed to move with a pleasure that was mindless.

When the gramophone stopped again, Simon said, "Thank you, Cassandra,"

still holding me in his arms, and smiling down at me.

I smiled back and said: "Thank you, too- it was lovely."

And then he bent his head and kissed me.

I have tried and tried to remember what I felt.

Surely I must have felt surprised, but no sense of it comes back to me.

All I can recall is happiness, happiness in my mind and in my heart and flowing through my whole body, happiness like the warm cloak of

sunlight that fell round me on the tower. It was a darkness, too- and the darkness comes again when I try to recapture the moment .. .

and then I find myself coldly separate--not only from Simon, but from myself as I was then. The figures I see in the candlelit pavilion are strangers to me.

The next thing I remember quite normally is the sound of Simon

laughing. It was the kindest, most gentle laugh but it startled me.

"You astonishing child," he said.

I asked what he meant.

"Only that you kiss very nicely." Then he added teasingly, "You must have had quite a lot of practice."

"I never kissed any man in my life before--" Instantly I wished I hadn't said it- for I saw that once he knew I wasn't used to kissing, yet had returned his kiss, he might guess how much it had meant to me.

I pulled away from him and ran to the door, only knowing that I wanted to hide my feelings.

"Cassandra--stop!" He caught me by the arm just as I got the door open.

"Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry! I ought to have known that you'd mind."

He hadn't guessed. I could see he just thought I was angry. I managed to pull myself together.

"What nonsense, Simon! Of course I didn't mind."

"You certainly didn't seem to-- -" He looked worried and puzzled.

"But why did you run away from me like that? Good heavens, surely you weren't frightened of me?"

"Of course I wasn't!"

"Then why?"

I thought of something that might sound reasonable:

"Simon, I wasn't frightened and I didn't mind--how could I mind being kissed by anyone I'm as fond of as I am of you?

But afterwards well, just for a second, I was angry that you'd taken it for granted that you could kiss me."

He looked quite stricken.

"But I didn't--not in the way you mean. Can you understand that it was a sudden impulse--because you've been so sweet all evening and because I'd enjoyed the dance, and because I like you very much ?"

"And because you were missing Rose, perhaps," I put in helpfully.

He flushed and said: "I'm damned if I'll pass that--that'd be an insult to both of you. No, it was a kiss in your own right, my child."

"Anyway, we're making too much of it," I told him.

"Let's forget it--and please forgive me for being so silly. Now may I hear the Bach record before I go home?" I felt that would set him at his ease a bit.

He still stood looking at me worriedly I think he was trying to find

words to explain more clearly. Then he gave it up.

"Very well--we'll play it while I put the candles out. You sit

outside, then my moving round won't disturb you.

I'll turn the fountains off so that you'll be able to hear."

I sat on the stone bench watching the dimpled water grow smooth.

Then the music began in the pavilion--the most gentle, peaceful music I ever heard. Through the three tall windows I could see Simon going

slowly round putting out each candle flame with a small metal hood.

Each time, I saw the light on his upturned face and each time, the

golden windows grew a little dimmer until at last they were black. Then the record ended and it was so quiet that I heard the tiny plop of a

fish jumping, far across the pool.

"Well, did I get a customer for Bach ?" Simon called, as he shut the door of the pavilion behind him.

"Yes, indeed! I could have listened to that for ever," I said, and asked the name of the piece. It was "Sheep May Safely Graze." We went on talking about music while we collected Heloise from the kitchen, and all during the drive home. I found it quite easy to carry on a casual conversation; it was as if my real feelings were down fathoms deep in my mind and what we said was just a feathery surface spray.

Godsend church was striking twelve as we drew up in front of the

gatehouse.

"Well, I've managed to get Cinderella home by midnight," said Simon, as he helped me out of the car. He saw me into the kitchen and lit the

candle for me, laughing at the unctuous bee-line Heloise made for her basket. I thanked him for my lovely evening and he thanked me for

letting him share in my Midsummer rites--he said that was something he would always remember.

Then, as he shook hands, he asked:

"Am I really forgiven ?"

I told him of course he was.

"I made a fuss about nothing. Heavens, what a prig you'll think me!"

He said earnestly: "I promise you I won't.

I think you're every thing that's nice, and thank you again." Then he gave my hand a brisk little squeeze--and the next second the door had closed behind him.

I stood absolutely still for a minute or so--then dashed upstairs, up through the bathroom tower and out on to the walls. The mist had

cleared away, so I could watch the lights of the car travel slowly

along the lane and turn on to the Godsend road.

Even after they vanished on the outskirts of the village I still

watched on, and caught one last glimpse of them on the road to

Scoatney.

All the time I stood on the walls I was in a kind of daze, barely

conscious of anything but the moving car; and when I pulled myself

together enough to go in and undress, I deliberately held my thoughts away from me. Only when I lay down in darkness did I at last let them flow into my mind. And with them came nothing but happiness--like the happiness I felt when Simon kissed me, but more serene. Oh, I told

myself that he belonged to Rose, that I could never win him from her

even if I were wicked enough to try, which I never would be. It made

no difference. Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I

had ever known.

The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return- that perhaps true loving can never know any thing but happiness. For a moment I felt that I had discovered a great truth.

And then I happened to catch sight of Miss Blossom's silhouette and

heard her say: "Well, you just hang on to that comforting bit of high-thinking, duckie, because you're going to need it."

And in some strange, far-off way I knew that was true -yet it still

made no difference. I fell asleep happier than I had ever been in my

life.

XIII

OH, how bitter it is to read that last line I wrote little over three weeks ago--now when I cannot even remember what happiness felt like!

I didn't read back any further. I was too afraid of losing the dead,

flat, watching-myself feeling which has come this morning for the first time. It is utterly dreary but better than acute wretchedness, and

has given me a faint desire to empty my mind into this journal, which will pass a few hours. But shall I be able to write about the wicked

thing I did on my birthday? Can I bring myself to describe it fully

his Perhaps I can work up to it.

Heavens, how miserable the weather has been--floods of rain, cold

winds; my birthday was the only sunny day.

Today is warm, but very dull and depressing. I am up on the mound,

sitting on the stone steps leading to Belmotte Tower. Heloise is with me--it is one of those times when she has to retire from society, and she gets so bored if I leave her shut up by herself. Her leash is

safely tied to my belt, in case she takes a sudden fancy to go

visiting. Cheer up, Heloise darling, only a few more days now before

you're free.

The rain began just after I finished my last entry that Sunday in the attic--when I looked out I saw great storm clouds blowing up in the

evening sky. I hurried down to close any open windows. I still seemed perfectly happy then; I remember telling myself so.

As I leaned out to pull the bedroom window in I noticed how motionless and expectant the wheat seemed; I hoped it was young enough not to mind being battered. Then I looked down and saw that my forgotten garland

had drifted round and was lying just below on the gray glass of the

moat. The next second, down came even as I watched it was driven

under.

Heloise was whimpering at the back door--and though I went down at once to let her in, she was soaking wet.

I dried her, then lit the kitchen fire, which had gone out while I was writing in the attic. I had just got it going when Stephen arrived,

back from London.

I sent him off to change his wet clothes; then we had tea together,

sitting on the fender. I told him about my evening with Simon- but

hugging all the secret bits to myself, of course--and then he talked

quite a lot about his trip; he seemed much less selfconscious over

being photographed, though I gathered he had been embarrassed by the

Greek tunic Leda Fox-Cotton had persuaded him to wear. He said he'd

had all his meals with the Fox-Cottons and slept in a room with gold

curtains and gold cupids over the bed.

And Aubrey Fox-Cotton had given him a dressing-gown, almost as good as new. I admired it and agreed that they were very kind people- all my

resentment of Leda Fox-Cotton seemed to have vanished.

"Did she show you the photographs she took last time?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. I saw them." He didn't sound enthusiastic.

"Well, when am I going to see them his Didn't she give you any ?"

"She told me I could take some, but I didn't like to. They're so large and- well, flattering. I'll ask for some next time if you really want to see them."

"You're going again, then ?"

"Yes, but for something different." He went very red.

"Oh, it's too silly to talk about."

I remembered Rose's letter.

"Does she want you to go on the pictures ?"

He said it was nonsense, really-- "But there was a man came to dinner last night who has to do with them and he thought I'd be all right.

They got me to read a piece aloud. I'm supposed to go and be

tested--that's what they call it. Only I don't know that I'll do

it."

"But of course you must, Stephen," I said encouragingly.

He looked at me quickly and asked if I'd like it if he acted- and I

suddenly saw that I had been wrong in thinking he had lost interest in me. (thought little did I then know how wrong.) I had only been asking him questions out of politeness--nothing but Simon mattered to me in

the least--but I tried to sound enthusiastic:

"Why, Stephen, it would be splendid--of course I'd like it."

"Then I'll try. They said they could teach me."

I thought they probably could--he has such a nice speaking voice though it gets a bit muffled and husky when he feels shy.

"Welt, it's most exciting," I said brightly.

"Perhaps you'll go to Hollywood."

He grinned and said he didn't think he'd count on that.

After we finished tea he helped me with the washing-up and then went

over to Four Stones Farm; the Stebbinses were having a party.

I bet Ivy was thrilled about his going on the pictures. (not that

anything more has happened about it yet.) I went to bed early, still

feeling happy. Even the sound of the rain beating on the roof gave me pleasure, because it reminded me that Simon had had all the leaks

mended for us. Everything in the least connected with him has value

for me; if someone even mentions his name it is like a little present to me--and I long to mention it myself, I start subjects leading up to it, and then feel myself going red. I keep swearing to myself not to

speak of him again- and then an opportunity occurs and I jump at it.

Father came home the next morning with a London telephone directory

sticking out of the carpetbag.

"Goodness, are we going to have a telephone?" I asked.

"Great heavens, no!" He plonked the bag on one of the kitchen chairs--from which it instantly fell to the floor, throwing out the

directory and various other books. Father shoved them back into the

bag as fast as he could, but I had time to notice a very fancy little Language of Flowers, Elementary Chinese and a paper called The Homing Pigeon.

"Where's the willow-pattern plate ?" I asked, trying to make my voice sound casual.

"I dropped it on Liverpool Street Station--but it had served its purpose." He turned to go to the gatehouse, then said he'd like a glass of milk first. While I got it for him, I asked if he had stayed at the Cottons" flat He said: "Oh yes, I had Simon's room-by the way, he particularly asked to be remembered to you; he said you entertained him very nicely."

"Where did you go when he came home yesterday ?"

"I just stayed on in his room. He went to Neil's hotel; very obliging of him. Simon has a charming nature-unfortunately."

"Why "unfortunately" ?" I asked, as I gave him his milk.

"Because Rose takes advantage of it," said Father.

"But then no man ought to be as much in love as Simon is- it makes one resent the whole female sex."

I took the milk jug back to the larder and called over my shoulder:

"Well, I don't see why it should--considering Rose is in love with him."

"Is she ?" said Father- and when I stayed in the larder hoping he would let the subject drop, he called me back.

"Are you sure she's in love with him, Cassandra his I'd be interested to know."

I said: "Well, she told me she was--and you know how truthful she is."

He thought for a minute, then said: "You're right. I can't remember her ever telling a lie. Truthfulness so often goes with

ruthlessness.

Yes, yes, if she says she's in love, she is --and her manner last night was quite compatible with it, given Rose's nature."

He put down his empty glass so I was able to take it to the sink and

keep my back to him.

"What was her manner like ?" I asked.

"So damned unresponsive--and so obviously sure of her power over him.

Oh, I daresay she can't help it--she's one of the women who oughtn't to be loved too kindly; when they are, some primitive desire for brutality makes them try to provoke it. But if she's really in love, it'll work out all right. Simon's so intelligent that he'll adjust the balance,

eventually--because he isn't weak, I'm sure;

it's simply that being so much in love puts a man at a disadvantage."

I managed to say: "Oh, I'm sure things will turn out right," and then concentrated on the glass- I never dried a glass so thoroughly in my

life. Father started off to the gatehouse again, to my great relief.

As he passed me, he said: "Glad we've had this talk. It's eased my mind considerably."

It hadn't eased mine. I suppose I ought to have been pleased at

hearing him talking so rationally, but I was much too submerged in my own troubles- for that was when misery engulfed me, and guilt too.

Everything he said about Simon's feelings for Rose was such agony that I suddenly knew it wasn't only the wonderful luxury of being in love

that had been buoying me up: deep down, in some vague, mixed way I had been letting myself hope that he didn't really care for her, that it

was me he loved and that kissing me would have made him realize it.

"You're a fool and worse was I told myself, "you're a would-be thief."

Then I began to cry and when I got out my handkerchief it smelt of

Rose's scent and reminded me I hadn't written to thank her for it.

"Before you do, you've got to get your conscience clear," I said to myself sternly, "and you know the way to do it. Things you let

yourself imagine happening, never do happen; so go ahead, have a

wonderful daydream about Simon loving you, marrying you instead of

Rose-and then he never will. You'll have given up any hope of winning him from her."

That made me wonder if I could have put up any opposition to Rose in

the early days, when it would have been quite fair. I thought of the

chance I missed on May Day when Simon and I walked to the village

together. If only I could have been more fascinating! But I decided

my fascination would have been embarrassing --I know Simon didn't care much for Rose's until he had fallen in love with her beauty; after

that, of course, he found the fascination fascinating.

Then I remembered Miss Marcy once saying "Dear Rose will lead men a dance," and it struck me that Father meant much the same thing when he spoke of Rose showing her power over Simon. Suddenly I had a great

desire to batter her, and as I was going to imagine away any chance of getting Simon, I decided to have a run for my money and batter Rose

into the bargain. So I stoked up the kitchen fire and put the stew on for lunch, then drew the arm-chair close and gave my imagination its

head- I was longing to, anyhow, apart from its being a noble gesture.

I visualized everything happening at Mrs.

Cotton's flat--I gave it a balcony overlooking Hyde Park. We began

there, then moved indoors. Rose came in while Simon was kissing me and was absolutely livid--or was that in a later imagining? There have

been so many that they have gradually merged into each other. I don't think I could bring myself to describe any of them in detail because, though they are wonderful at the time, they give me a flat, sick,

ashamed feeling to look back on. And they are like a drug, one needs

them oftener and oftener and has to make them more and more

exciting--until at last one's imagination won't work at all. It comes back after a few days, though.

Goodness knows how I can ever look Rose in the face after the things I have imagined saying and doing to her- I got as far as kicking her

once. Of course I always pretend that she isn't in love with Simon,

merely after his money. Poor Rose! It is extraordinary how fond I can feel of her really, not to mention guilty towards her--and yet hate her like poison in my imaginings.

Coming back to earth after that first one was particularly awful,

because it was the one which gave Simon up irrevocably --the others

didn't have the same tampering-with-fate feeling (but it is always

dreadful when the pictures in front of one's eyes become meaningless, and the real world is there instead and seems meaningless, too). I

certainly wasn't in any mood for writing to Rose, but in the afternoon I forced myself to- it was like making up a letter for a character in a book to write. I told her how pleased I was with the bottle of scent, and put in bits about Hcl and About and the miserable weather- the rain was useful as a lead into: "How lucky it was fine on Midsummer Eve. It was so nice that Simon was here for it--tell him I enjoyed every

minute--" It was glorious writing that--almost like telling him I was glad he had kissed me.

But after I posted the letter I was worried in case he guessed what I meant. And as I walked back from the post-office I had the most

agonizing thought; supposing he had told Rose about kissing me and they had laughed about it his It hurt me so much that I moaned out loud. I wanted to fling myself down in the mud and beat my way into the

ground.

I had just enough sense to know what I should look like after trying, so stayed upright; but I couldn't go on walking. I went and sat on a

stile and tried to turn the thought out of my mind- and then worse

thoughts rushed in on me. I asked myself; if it wasn't wrong of Simon to kiss me when he is in love with Rose --if he was the sort of man who thinks any girl will do to kiss his Of all the agonies, the worst is

when I think badly of Simon; not that I ever do for very long.

After I had been sitting there in the rain for a while, I saw that

there was nothing dreadful in his having kissed me. In spite of his

saying it wasn't due to his missing Rose, it probably was. Anyway, I

think Americans kiss rather easily and frequently--Miss Marcy had some American magazines once and there were pictures of people kissing on

almost every page, including the advertisements. I expect Americans

are affectionate, as a nation.

I would certainly never have been surprised if Neil had kissed me and I wouldn't have thought it meant he was seriously in love. Somehow it

seemed unlike Simon but .. . Then I wondered if he had thought I

expected it, if I had somehow invited a kiss. That made me want to die of shame and yet was comforting because it put Simon in the right if

he had done it out of kindness.

Suddenly I said aloud into the rain: "He won't tell Rose and laugh.

And he didn't do anything wrong--whatever his reasons were, they

weren't wrong. If you love people, you take them on trust."

Then I got off the stile and walked home. And in spite of the

drenching rain, I felt quite warm.

That little glow of comfort lasted me right through the evening but was gone when I woke up next morning. Wakings are the worst times-almost

before my eyes are open a great weight seems to roll on to my heart. I can usually roll it off a bit during the day--for one thing, food helps quite a lot, unromantic as that sounds. I have grown more and more

ravenous as I have grown more and more miserable. Sleep is wonderful, too- I never thought of it as a pleasure before, but now I long for it.

The best time of all is before I fall asleep at night, when I can hold the thought of Simon close to me and feel the misery slip away. I

often sleep in the daytime, too.

Surely it isn't normal for anyone so miserably in love to eat and sleep so well? Am I a freak his I only know that I am miserable, I am in

love, but I raven food and sleep.

Another great luxury is letting myself cry--I always feel marvelously peaceful after that. But it is difficult to arrange times for it, as

my face takes so long to recover;

it isn't safe in the mornings if I am to look normal when I meet Father at lunch, and the afternoons are no better, as Thomas is home by five.

It would be all right in bed at night but such a waste, as that is my happiest time.

Days when Father goes over to read in the Scoatney library are good

crying-days.

On the Wednesday of that first week of mud and misery I went to see

the Vicar; he has a lot of old music and I hoped I might find "Sheep May Safely Graze." The rain stopped for a few hours that morning but it was very cold and damp, and the battered countryside looked rather as I felt. As I sloshed along the Godsend road, planning to be careful not to give myself away to the Vicar, I found myself wondering if it

would be a relief to confess to someone, as Lucy Snowe did in Villette.

The Vicar isn't High Church enough for confessions, and certainly most of me would have loathed to tell him or anybody else one word; but I

did have a feeling that a person as wretched as I was ought to be able to get some sort of help from the Church. Then I told myself that as I never gave the Church a thought when I was feeling happy, I could

hardly expect it to do anything for me when I wasn't. You can't get

insurance money without paying in premiums.

I found the Vicar starting to plan a sermon, wrapped in the collie dog carriage rug. I do love his study; it has old green paneling except

for the wall that is bookshelves from floor to ceiling. His

housekeeper keeps everything very shining and clean.

"Now this is splendid," he said.

"An excuse to stop working-and to light a fire."

He lit it; even to watch it crackling up was cheering. He said he

didn't think he had "Sheep May Safely Graze," but I could look through his music. Most of it is in old calf-bound volumes he bought at a

country-house sale. They have a musty smell, and the printing looks

different from modern music; there is an elaborately engraved page in front of each piece. As one turns the pages, one thinks of all the

people who have turned them in the past and it seems to take one back closer to the composers--I like to think of the Beethoven pieces being played not very many years after he died.

I soon came across "Air From Handel's Water Music"--which was no longer specially valuable to me--but I never found "Sheep May Safely Graze."

Still, looking through the old volumes was soothing, because thinking of the past made the present seem a little less real. And while I was searching, the Vicar got out biscuits and madeira. I never had madeira before and it was lovely- the idea almost more than the taste, because it made me feel I was paying a morning call in an old novel. For a

moment I drew away from myself and thought: "Poor Cassandra!

No, it never comes right for her. She goes into a decline."

We talked of the Cottons and Scoatney and how wonderful every thing was for everybody and how happy we were for Rose.

He was most interested to hear Simon had spent Midsummer Eve with me

and asked lots of questions about it. After that, we got started on

religion, which surprised me rather, as the Vicar so seldom mentions

it--I mean, to our family;

naturally it must come up in his daily life.

"You ought to try it, one of these days," he said.

"I

believe you'd like it."

I said: "But I have tried it, haven't I? I've been to church. It never seems to take."

He laughed and said he knew I'd exposed myself to infection

occasionally.

"But catching things depends so much on one's state of health. You should look in on the church if ever you're mentally run down."

I remembered my thoughts on the way to the village.

"Oh, it wouldn't be fair to rush to church because one was miserable,"

I said --taking care to look particularly cheerful.

"It'd be most unfair not to--you'd be doing religion out of its very best chance."

"You mean "Man's extremity is God's opportunity"?"

"Exactly. Of course, there are extremities at either end; extreme happiness invites religion almost as much as extreme misery."

I told him I'd never thought of that. He helped me to some more

madeira, then said:

"In addition, I think religion has a chance of a look-in whenever the mind craves solace in music or poetry-in any form of art at all.

Personally, I think it is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt."

"I suppose you mean communion with God."

He gave such a snort of laughter that his madeira went the wrong way.

"What on earth did I say that was funny ?" I asked, while he was mopping his eyes.

"It was the utter blankness of your tone. God might have been a long, wet week- which He's certainly treating us to." He glanced at the window. The rain had started again, so heavily that the garden beyond the streaming panes was just a blur of green.

"How the intelligent young do fight shy of the mention of God!

It makes them feel both bored and superior."

I tried to explain: "Well, once you stop believing in an old gentleman with a beard .. .

It's only the word God, you know-it makes such a conventional noise."

"It's merely shorthand for where we come from, where we're going, and what it's all about."

"And do religious people find out what it's all about?

Do they really get the answer to the riddle ?"

"They get just a whiff of an answer sometimes." He smiled at me and I smiled back and we both drank our madeira. Then he went on: "I suppose church services make a conventional noise to you, too--and I rather

understand it. Oh, they're all right for the old hands and they make

for sociability, but I sometimes think their main use is to help

weather churches- like smoking pipes to color them, you know. If any-

well, unreligious person, needed consolation from religion, I'd advise him or her to sit in an empty church.

Sit, not kneel. And listen, not pray. Prayer's a very tricky

business."

"Goodness, is it ?"

"Well, for inexperienced prayers it sometimes is.

You see, they're apt to think of God as a slot-machine. If nothing

comes out they say "I knew dashed well it was empty"--when the whole secret of prayer is knowing the machine's full."

"But how can one know?"

"By filling it oneself."

"With faith ?"

"With faith. I expect you find that another boring word. And I warn you this slot-machine metaphor is going to break down at any moment.

But if ever you're feeling very unhappy- which you obviously aren't at present, after all the good fortune that's come to your family

recently--well, try sitting in an empty church."

"And listening for a whiff?"

We both laughed and then he said that it was just as reasonable to talk of smelling or tasting God as of seeing or hearing Him.

"If one ever has any luck, one will know with all one's senses--and none of them. Probably as good a way as any of describing it is that

we shall "come over all queer."" "But haven't you already ?"

He sighed and said the whiffs were few and far between.

"But the memory of them everlasting," he added softly. Then we fell silent, both of us staring at the fire. Rain kept falling down the

chimney, making little hissing noises. I thought what a good man he

is, yet never annoyingly holy. And it struck me for the first time

that if such a clever, highly educated man can believe in religion, it is almost impudent of an ignorant person like me to feel bored and

superior about it--for I realized that it wasn't only the word "God"

that made me feel like that.

I wondered if I was an atheist. I have never thought of myself as one, and sometimes on very lovely days I have felt almost sure there is

something somewhere. And I pray every night, though I think my prayers are only like wishing on the new moon -not quite, though: I pray just in case there is a God. (i haven't prayed about my misery over Simon

because I mustn't ask that he shall love me, and I won't ask that I

shall stop loving him--I'd rather die.) Certainly I never felt any

sense of communion with God while praying- the only flicker of that I ever had was during those few minutes I wandered round King's Crypt

cathedral at sunset, and it went off when I heard our head-mistress's voice droning on about the Saxon remains. Sitting there with the

Vicar, I tried to recapture my feelings in the cathedral, but they

merged into the memory of the cathedral-like the avenue I saw when I

was describing Midsummer Eve--and then the cathedral, the avenue, my

love for Simon and myself writing about all these in the attic were in my mind together, each enclosed in its own light and yet each one part of the other. And all the time, I was staring into the Vicar's fire.

I didn't come to earth until the church clock struck the half-hour.

Then I jumped up to go--and got invited to stay and lunch;

but I felt I ought to get back to cook Father his meal.

While the Vicar was helping me on with my raincoat, he asked me to look in at the church in case he had left the vestry window open and the

rain was driving in. Actually, we found the rain had stopped, but he

still wanted the window shut;

he said it was sure to start pouring again, probably just as he was

beginning his after-luncheon nap. He stood watching me as I ran across the churchyard- I gave him one last wave before I went into the church by the little side door. As I closed it behind me, it struck me as

almost funny that he had sent me into a church, even advised me how to get consolation from religion, without having the faintest idea I was in need of it.

The window wasn't open, after all. As I came from the vestry, I

thought: "Well, here you are in an empty church --you'd better give it a chance." I was close to the altar so I had a good look at it. The brasses and the altar-cloth seemed quite extraordinarily meaningless to me. The white roses were fresh but rain-battered;

they had the utterly still look that altar flowers always

have--everything about the altar seemed unnaturally still.." austere, withdrawn.

I thought, "I don't feel helped or comforted at all." Then I remembered the Vicar's nice, fat voice saying: "Sit--listen." He had told me not to pray, and as looking at an altar always seems to turn my thoughts to prayers, I sat on the steps and looked towards the main

body of the church. I listened hard.

I could hear rain still pouring from the gutters and a thin branch

scraping against one of the windows; but the church seemed completely cut off from the restless day outside--just as I felt cut off from the church. I thought: "I am a restlessness inside a stillness in side a restlessness."

After a minute or so, the enclosed silence began to press on my ears--I thought at first that this was a good sign, but nothing interesting

happened. Then I remembered what the Vicar had said about knowing God with all one's senses, so I gave my ears a rest and tried my nose.

There was a smell of old wood, old carpet hassocks, old hymn books--a composite musty, dusty smell; no scent from the cold altar roses and

yet there was a faint, stuffy sweetness around the altar--I found it

came from the heavily embroidered cloth. I tried my sense of taste

next, but naturally it only offered a lingering of madeira and

biscuits. Touch:

just the cold stone of the steps. As for sight- well of course there

was plenty to see: the carved rood-screen, the great de Godys tomb, the high pulpit- which managed to look both particularly empty and slightly rebuking. Oh, I noticed dozens of things, many of them beautiful, but nothing beyond sight came in by the eyes. So I closed them-the Vicar

had said "All senses--and none of them" and I thought that perhaps if I made my mind a blank I have often tried- I once had an idea it was the way to foresee the future, but I never got any further than imagining blackness.

Sitting on the altar steps, I saw a blacker blackness than ever before, and I felt it as well as saw it--tons of darkness seemed to be pressing on me. Suddenly I remembered a line in a poem by Vaughan: "There is in God (some say) a deep but dazzling darkness" -and the next second, the darkness exploded into light.

"Was that God--did it really happen?" I asked myself.

But the honest part of my mind answered: "No. You imagined it."

Then the clock up above boomed the three-quarters, filling the air with sound.

I opened my eyes and was back in a beautiful, chilly, stuffy church

that didn't seem to care whether I lived or died.

The clock made me realize that I was going to be late with Father's

lunch, so I ran most of the way home--only to find that he had helped himself to food (the cold meat looked as if he had carved it with a

trowel) and gone out. As his bicycle was missing, I guessed he had

ridden over to Scoatney. I took a chance on getting my face right in

time for tea and had a very good cry, with cake and milk afterwards;

and felt so much better than I usually do, even after crying, that I

wondered if I really had come by some little whiff of God while I was in the church.

But the next morning, the weight on my heart was the worst I had ever known. It didn't move at all while I got our breakfasts, and by the

time Stephen and Thomas had gone and Father had shut himself in the

gatehouse, it was so bad that I found myself going round leaning

against walls-- I can't think why misery makes me lean against walls, but it does. For once, I didn't feel like crying;

I wanted to shriek. So I ran out in the rain to an empty field a long way from anywhere and screamed blue murder; and then felt quite

extraordinarily silly- and so very wet.

I had a sudden desire to be sitting with the kind Vicar by his fire,

drinking madeira again, and as I was almost half-way to Godsend as the crow flies, I went on, scrambling through hedges and ditches. I kept

trying to think of a good excuse for this second visit--the best I

could manage was that I had been caught out without my raincoat and was frightened of taking a chili--but I was really past minding what the

Vicar or anyone else thought of me, if only I could get to the warm

fire and the madeira.

And then, when I arrived at the vicarage, there was no one in.

I stood there ringing the bell and banging on the door, feeling I could somehow make someone be there, yet knowing all the time that I

couldn't.

"Shall I crawl into the church and wait?" I wondered, coming down the streaming garden path. But just then, Mrs.

Jakes called across from "The Keys" that the Vicar and his housekeeper were shopping in King's Crypt and wouldn't be home until the evening.

I ran over and asked if she would trust me for the price of a glass of port. She laughed, and said she couldn't legally sell me a drink

before twelve o'clock but she would give me one as a present.

"And, my goodness, you need it," she said, as I followed her into the bar.

"You're wet through. Take that dress off and I'll dry it by the

kitchen fire."

There was a man mending the sink in the kitchen so I couldn't sit in

there without my dress; but she bolted the door of the bar and said she would see that no one came through from the kitchen.

I handed my gym-dress over and sat up at the bar in my vest and black school knickers, drinking my port.

The port was nice and warming, but I don't think old country bars are very cheerful places; there is something peculiarly depressing about

the smell of stale beer. If I had been in a good mood, I might have

liked the thought of villagers drinking there for three hundred years; but as it was, I kept thinking of how dreary their lives must have

been, and that most of them were dead. There was a looking-glass at

the back of the bar, facing the window, and reflected in it I could see the wet tombstones in the churchyard. I thought of the rain going

down, down to the sodden coffins.

And all the time my wet hair kept dripping down my back inside my

vest.

However, by the time I finished the port I was less violently

miserable.

I just felt lumpish and my eyes kept getting fixed on things.

I found myself staring at the bottles of creme de menthe and cherry

brandy that Rose and I had our drinks out of on May Day.

suddenly I felt the most bitter hatred for Rose's green creme de menthe and a deep affection for my ruby cherry brandy.

I went to the kitchen door and put my head round.

"Please, Mrs. Jakes," I called, "can I have a cherry brandy? It's striking twelve now, so I can owe you for it without breaking the

law."

She came and got it for me, and after she put the bottle back I could gloat over there being more gone out of it than out of the creme de

menthe bottle.

"Now everyone will think the cherry brandy's the popular one," I thought. Then two old men came knocking at the door, wanting their

beer, and Mrs.

Jakes whisked me and my drink out of the bar.

"You can wait in Miss Marcy's room," she said.

"Your dress won't be dry for quite a while yet."

Miss Marcy has an upstairs room at the inn, well away from the noise of the bar. Ever since she came to Godsend she has talked of having her

own cottage, but year after year she stays on at "The Keys" and I don't think she will ever move now.

Mrs. Jakes makes her very comfortable and the inn is so handy for the school.

As I climbed the stairs I was surprised to find how wobbly my legs

were. I said to myself, "Poor child, I'm more exhausted than I

realized." It was a relief to sit down in Miss Marcy's wicker

armchair--except that it was much lower than I expected; I spilt a

valuable amount of cherry brandy. I finished the rest of it with deep satisfaction--each time I took a sip I thought, "That's one in the eye for the creme de menthe." And then the very confusing thought struck me that generally green is my color and pink is Rose's, so the liqueurs were all mixed up and silly. And then I wondered if I was a little bit drunk. I had a look at myself in Miss Marcy's dressing-table glass and I looked awful- my hair was in rats'-tails, my face was dirty and my

expression simply maudlin. For no reason at all, I grinned at myself, Then I began to think: "Who am I his Who am I ?" Whenever I do that, I feel one good push would shove me over the edge of lunacy; so I turned away from the glass and tried to get my mind off myself--I did it by

taking an interest in Miss Marcy's room.

It really is fascinating--all her personal possessions are so very

small. The pictures are postcard reproductions of Old Masters. She

has lots of metal animals about an inch long, little wooden shoes,

painted boxes only big enough to hold stamps. And what makes things

look even tinier than they are is that the room is large, with great

oak beams, and all Mrs. Jakes's furniture is so huge.

While I was examining the miniature Devon pitchers on the mantelpiece (five of them, with one wild flower in each), the glow from the cherry brandy wore off-probably because the wind down the chimney was blowing right through my knickers. So I wrapped myself in the quilt and lay on the bed. I was on the fringe of sleep when Miss Marcy arrived home for her lunch.

"You poor, poor child," she cried, coming over to put her hand on my forehead.

"I wonder if I ought to take your temperature ?"

I told her there was nothing wrong with me but strong drink.

She giggled and blinked and said "Well, reely!" and I suddenly felt very world-worn and elderly in comparison with her.

Then she handed me my gym-dress and got me some hot water. After I

had washed I felt quite normal, except that the whole morning lay on my conscience in a dreary, shaming sort of way.

"I must dash home," I said.

"I'm half-an-hour late with Father's lunch already."

"Oh, your Father's at Scoatney again," said Miss Marcy.

"They're giving him a nice, thick steak." She had heard from Mrs.

Jakes, who had heard from the butcher, who had heard from the Scoatney cook.

"So you can stay and have your lunch with me.

Mrs. Jakes is going to send up enough for two."

She has her meals on trays, from the inn kitchen, but she keeps things she calls "extra treats" in the big mahogany corner-cupboard.

"I like to nibble these at night," she said as she was getting some biscuits out.

"I always wake up around two o'clock and fancy some thing to eat."

I had a flash of her lying in the wide, sagging bed, watching the

moonlit square of the lattice window while she crunched her biscuits.

"Do you lie awake long?" I asked.

"Oh, I generally hear the church clock strike the quarter. Then I tell myself to be a good girl and go back to sleep.

I usually make up some nice little story until I drop off."

"What sort of story ?"

"Oh, not real stories, of course. Sometimes I try to imagine what happens to characters in books- after the books finish, I mean. Or I

think about the interesting people I know--dear Rose shopping in

London, or Stephen being photographed by that kind Mrs. Fox.

Cotton. I love making up stories about people."

"Don't you ever make them up about yourself?"

She looked quite puzzled.

"Do you know, I don't believe I ever do his I suppose I don't find myself very interesting."

There was a thump on the door and she went to take the tray in.

Mrs. Jakes had sent up stew and apple pie.

"Oh, good," said Miss Marcy.

"Stew's so comforting on a rainy day."

As we settled down to eat, I said how extraordinary it must be not to find oneself interesting.

"Didn't you ever, Miss Marcy ?"

She thought, while she finished an enormous mouthful.

"I think I did when I was a girl. My dear Mother always said I was very self-centered. And so discontented!"

I said: "You aren't now. What changed you?"

"God sent me a real grief, dear." Then she told me that her parents had died within a month of each other, when she was seven teen, and how dreadfully she had felt it.

"Oh, dear, I couldn't believe the sun would ever shine again.

Then our local clergyman asked me to help with some children he was

taking into the country- and, do you know, it worked a miracle for me his I suppose that was the beginning of finding others more interesting than myself."

"It wouldn't work a miracle for me," I said, "--I mean, if I were ever unhappy."

She said she thought it would in the end; then asked me if I was

missing Rose much. I noticed she was looking at me rather searchingly, so I said "Oh yes," very casually and talked brightly about Rose's trousseau and how happy I was for her, until we heard children's voices under the window as they trooped back to school. Then Miss Marcy

jumped up and powdered her nose very white with a tiny powder-puff out of a cardboard box.

"It's singing this afternoon," she said.

"We always look forward to that."

I thought of the singing on May Day, and of Simon, so embarrassed and so kind, making his speech to the children.

Oh, lovely day- before he had proposed to Rose!

We went downstairs and I thanked Mrs.

Jakes for everything, including the loan of the cherry brandy. (a

shilling--and that was a reduced price. Drink is ruinous.) The rain

had stopped, but it was still very gray and chilly.

"I hope it cheers up by Saturday," said Miss Marcy, as we dodged the drips from the chestnut tree, "because I'm giving the children a picnic. I suppose, dear, you couldn't find time to help me? You'd

think of such splendid games."

"I'm afraid I'm a bit busy at the castle," I said quickly--the children were screaming over some game in the playground and I didn't feel I

could stand an afternoon of that.

"How thoughtless of me! Of course you have your hands full at the week-ends--with the boys home to be looked after as well as your

Father. Perhaps you have some free time in these long, light evenings-some of the old folks do love to be read to, you know."

I stared at her in astonishment. Neither Rose nor I have ever gone in for that sort of thing; incidentally, I don't believe the villagers

really like good works being done to them. Miss Marcy must have

noticed my expression because she went on hurriedly: "Oh, it was just an idea. I thought it might take you out of yourself a bit-if you're

finding life dull without Rose."

"Not really," I said, brightly--and heaven knows, one can't call misery dull, exactly. Dear Miss Marcy, little did she know I had more than

missing Rose on my mind. Just then, some children came up with a frog in a cardboard box, so she said good-bye and went off with them to the pond to watch it swim.

When I got home, the castle was completely deserted, even About and Hcl were out. I felt guilty, because they had had no dinner, and called

and called them but they didn't come. My voice sounded despairing and I suddenly felt lonelier than I ever remember feeling, and more deeply sad. Everything I looked at was gray--gray water in the moat, great

gray towering walls, remote gray sky;

even the wheat, which was between green and gold, seemed colorless.

I sat on the bedroom window-seat, staring woodenly at Miss Blossom.

Suddenly her voice spoke, in my head: "You go to that:

picnic, dearie."

I heard myself ask her why.

"Because little Miss Blink eyes is right--it would take you out of yourself. And doing things for others gives you a lovely glow."

"So does port," I said cynically.

"That's no way to talk, not at your age," said Miss Blossom.

"Though I must say you'd have made a cat laugh, walking about in your drawers with that cherry brandy. Fancy you having a taste for

drink!"

"Well, I can't drown my sorrows in it often," I told her, "it's too expensive. Good works are cheaper."

"So's religion," said Miss Blossom.

"And some say that's best of all. You could get it all right if you went on trying, you know-you being so fond of poetry."

Now it is very odd, but I have often told myself things through Miss

Blossom that I didn't know I knew.

When she said that about my "getting" religion, I instantly realized that she was right--and it came as such a surprise to me that I thought

"Heavens, have I been converted?" I soon decided that it wasn't quite so drastic as that; all that had come to me, really, was--well, the

feasibility of conversion. I suddenly knew that religion,

God-something beyond everyday life--was there to be found, provided one is really willing. And I saw that though what I felt in the church

was only imagination, it was a step on the way; because imagination

itself can be a kind of willingness--a pretence that things are real, due to one's longing for them. It struck me that this was somehow tied up with what the Vicar said about religion being an extension of

art--and then I had a glimpse of how religion really can cure you of

sorrow; somehow make use of it, turn it to beauty, just as art can make sad things beautiful.

I found myself saying: "Sacrifice is the secret --you have to sacrifice things for art and it's the same with religion; and then the sacrifice turns out to be a gain." Then I got confused and I couldn't hold on to what I meant--until Miss Blossom remarked:

"Nonsense, duckie--it's perfectly simple.

You lose yourself in something beyond yourself and it's a lovely

rest."

I saw that, all right. Then I thought: "But that's how Miss Marcy cured her sorrow, too- only she lost herself in other people instead of in religion." Which way of life was best--hers or the Vicar's?

I decided that he loves God and merely likes the villagers, whereas she loves the villagers and merely likes Godand then I suddenly wondered if I could combine both ways, love God and my neighbor equally. Was I

really willing to?

And I was! Oh, for a moment I truly was! I saw myself going to church regularly, getting myself confirmed, making a little chapel with

flowers and candles- and being so wonderful to everyone at home and in the village, telling stories to the children, reading to the old people (i daresay tact could disguise that one was doing good works to them).

Would I be sincere or just pretending? Even if it began as pretence,

surely it would grow real before very long?

Perhaps it was real already--for the very thought of it rolled the

weight of misery off my heart, drove it so far away that, though I saw it still, I no longer felt it.

And then a most peculiar thing happened: I found myself seeing the new road that skirts King's Crypt -wide, straight, with plenty of room for through-traffic. And then I saw the busy part of the town, with its

tangle of narrow old streets that are so awful for motorists on market days, but so very, very beautiful.

Of course, what my mind's eye was trying to tell me was that the Vicar Miss Marcy had managed to by-pass the suffering that comes to

people--he by his religion, she by her kindness to others.

And came to me that if one does that, one is liable to miss too along with the suffering- perhaps, in a way, life itself.

Is that why Miss Marcy seems so young for her age- why the Vicar, in of all his cleverness, has that look of an elderly baby his I said aloud:

"I don't want to miss anything."

And then misery came rushing back like a river that has been dammed up.

I tried to open my heart to it, to welcome it as a part of my life's

experience,.

and at first that made it easier to bear. Then it got worse than ever before- it was physical as well as mental, my heart and ribs and

shoulders and chest, even my arms, ached. I longed so desperately for someone to comfort me that I went and laid my head on Miss Blossom's

bust I thought of it as soft and Motherly, under a royal-blue satin

blouse, and imagined her saying: "That's right--go through it, not round it, duckie. It's the best way for most of us in the end."

And then a different voice spoke in my head, a bitter, sarcastic

voice--my own at its very nastiest. It said:

"You've sunk pretty low, my girl, clasping a dressmaker's dummy.

And aren't you a bit old for this Miss Blossom nonsense?" Then, for the first time in my life, I began to wonder how I "did" Miss Blossom.

Was she like Stephen's mother, but not so humble--or nearer to a

charwoman of Aunt Millicent's? Or had I taken her from some character in a book his Suddenly I saw her more vividly than ever before,

standing behind the bar of an old-fashioned London pub. She looked at me most reproachfully, then put a sealskin jacket over her blue blouse, turned off all the lights, and went out into the night closing the door behind her. The next second, her bust was as hard as a board and smelt of dust and old glue.

And I knew she was gone for ever.

Luckily, Heloise came in then or I should have cried myself into a

state beyond recovery before tea-time. You can't cry on Heloise; she

thumps her tail sympathetically, but looks embarrassed and moves away.

Anyhow, I had to get her long-overdue dinner.

I haven't been able to bear looking at Miss Blossom since then.

It isn't only that she is now nothing more than a dressmaker's

dummy--she makes me think of the corpse of a dressmaker's dummy.

Religion, good works, strong drink- oh, but there is another way of

escape, a wicked one, far worse than drink.

I tried it on my birthday a week ago.

When I woke up that morning the sun was shining--the first time for

over a fortnight. I had barely taken this in when I heard music just

outside my bedroom door. I sprang up and dashed out to the landing,

and there on the floor was a small portable wireless, with a card on it saying: "Many happy returns from Stephen." That was what he had been saving up for! That was why he had posed for Leda Fox-Cotton!

I yelled out: "Stephen, Stephen!"

Thomas shouted from the hall.

"He's gone off to work early-I think he felt embarrassed about being thanked.

It's quite a good little wireless. Get dressed quickly and we'll play it over breakfast."

He came bounding upstairs and had carried the wireless off before I had so much as turned the dials. I was just going to tell him to bring it back when I thought, "Heavens, what does it matter ?" The early morning weight had descended on my heart.

While I dressed, I worked it out that only two weeks and two days

before, owning a wireless would have made me deliriously happy; and now it didn't mean a thing. Then it struck me that I could at least do my suffering to music.

When I got down, I found that Stephen had set the breakfast table for me and put flowers on it.

"And there's my present," said Thomas.

"I

haven't wrapped it up because I'm just in the middle of it." It was a book on astronomy, which he is very much interested in; I was glad he had chosen some thing he wanted himself, because though he gets a

little pocket money now, it will take a long time to make up for all

the years he didn't have any.

Father came down then; of course he hadn't remembered my birthday.

"But Topaz will," he said, cheerfully.

"She'll send you something from me." He was horrified to see the wireless --he has always said that being without one is one of the few pleasures of poverty; but he got interested during breakfast.

Only he couldn't bear the music or voices- what he liked were the

atmospherics.

"I suppose you wouldn't care to lend it to me for an hour or so ?"

he said, after Thomas had gone off to school.

"These noises are splendid."

I let him take it. All that really mattered to me was whether or not

Simon would send me a present.

The parcel-post came at eleven. There was a dressing-gown from Topaz, a Shakespeare from Father (so tactful of Topaz to remember how he hates lending me his), a nightgown -real silk- from Rose, six pairs of silk stockings from Mrs. Cotton, and a big box of chocolates from Neil.

Nothing from Simon.

Nothing from Simon, indeed! I was still sitting numbed with

disappointment when a motor horn hooted in the lane. The next minute a van drew up and the driver plonked a crate down on the drawbridge. I

yelled up asking Father to come down and between us we prized the lid off. Inside was a wireless and a gramophone combined--oh, the most

wonderful thing! When shut, it is like a fat suitcase, with a handle

to carry it by. The outside is a lovely blue, like linen but shiny.

There was a record case to match.

Nobody ever had such a glorious present.

Simon had enclosed a note saying:

Dear Cassandra, I wanted to send you an electric one, but remembered

you've no electricity. The radio works from batteries that can be

re-charged at the garage in Scoatney, but the phonograph is only the

old-fashioned type that has to be wound up--still, it's better than

nothing.

I am sending you the Debussy you liked, but couldn't get the Bach

record I played to you. Borrow anything you want from Scoatney until

you find out what your musical tastes really are and then I'll buy you lots more records.

They swear the thing will get to you on the right day and I do hope it does. Many, many happy returns. I'll be seeing you soon. Love from

Simon It was in pencil, written at the shop, so I couldn't expect it to be long or personal. And it did say "Love"--he might have put just

"Yours" or "In haste" or something. Of course, I knew it didn't mean my kind of love, but it was valuable.

I read the note again and again, while Father got the most agonizing

noises out of the wireless.

"Oh, stop!" I cried at last.

"It can't be good for it to shriek like that."

"Sounds like the lost souls of sea gulls, doesn't it?" he shouted above the din.

I pushed past him and turned it off. In the sudden quietness, we could just hear Stephen's wireless playing away by itself up in the gatehouse room. Father said:

"Has it occurred to you what this thing is going to do to your swam

?"

All that I felt was resentment against Stephen because his being hurt was going to interfere with my pleasure in Simon's present;

not very much though--nothing could do that.

Luckily Father didn't wait for an answer.

"This is a much stronger wireless," he went on. I'll borrow it awhile."

I shouted "No!" so loudly that he stared in astonishment.

"I'm longing to try the gramophone," I added, trying to sound calm and reasonable. He suddenly smiled and said, "Well, well"-in an almost fatherly voice; then actually carried the machine indoors for me and

left me alone with it. I got the records out of their corrugated paper and played them and played them. There were some Bach Preludes and

Fugues as well as the Debussy album.

Simon hadn't sent the "Lover" record.

By the time Stephen got home, my better nature had asserted itself and I was terribly worried about his feelings. I had his wireless in the

kitchen (father had lost interest in it) and was careful to have it on full blast when he came in. I nearly burst myself thanking him for it and I don't think I have ever seen him look so I had asked Father

during lunch if it would be a good idea to Simon's present for a day or two, but he thought that would harder for Stephen in the end.

"Just tell him how glad you are to have a really lightweight wireless you can carry around--and that you'll probably only use Simon's for the gramophone," he suggested, and I thought it was very sensible of him; but the next minute record round and round as if he were reading the

grooves, and surely a man who tries to read a gramophone record cannot be normal?

I did my best to break the news to Stephen tactfully--I said all Father had advised and a lot more besides.

"Yours has a real wooden case," I told him, "with such a beautiful high polish." But the light went out of his eyes. He asked if he could see Simon's present I had carried it up to my bedroom. After staring at it a few seconds," he said: "Yes, that's very handsome"--and turned to go.

"The wireless part isn't very good," I called after him,

untruthfully.

He went on downstairs.

Oh, I was so sorry for him! After all the months he had been saving

up! I ran after him and, from the top of the kitchen stairs, I could

see him staring at his little brown wireless.

He turned it off, then went out into the garden with a most bitter

expression on his face.

I caught up with him as he was crossing the drawbridge.

"Let's go for a little walk," I said.

"All right, if you want to." He said it without looking at me.

We trudged down the lane. I felt as I did once when Rose had very bad toothache--that it was callous of me to be so separate from the pain, that just being sorry for suffering people isn't enough. Yet when I

asked myself if on Stephen's account I would be willing not to have had Simon's present, I knew that I wouldn't.

I tried to talk naturally about the two machines, enlarging on how I

could carry his little one from room to room and even take it out of

doors (although I knew that unless Stephen was around I should lug

Simon's everywhere, even if it broke my back). I suppose I overdid it because he interrupted and said:

"It's all right, you know."

I looked at him quickly. He tried to smile reassuringly, but didn't

quite let his eyes meet mine.

"Oh, Stephen!" I cried.

"It was a much bigger present from you.

Simon didn't have to save--or work for it."

"No, that was my privilege," he said quietly.

That seemed to me a most beautiful way for him to have put it.

It made me sorrier for him than ever--so sorry that I found myself

almost wishing I had fallen in love with him instead of with Simon.

Just then he added, very softly, "My dear." And that second, a wild idea flashed into my mind. Oh, why did it his Was it something in his voice awoke that feeling in me? Or was it because we were passing the larch wood and I remembered how I once imagined going into it with

him?

I stopped walking and stared at him. His face was golden from the

sunset. He asked me if I wanted to turn back.

I said, "No. Let's see if there are any late bluebells in the wood."

He looked at me quickly, right into the eyes at last.

"Come on," I said.

As we pushed aside the first green trails of larch I thought, "Well, this will disprove my theory that things I've imagined happening never really do happen." But it didn't- because everything was so different from my imagining. The wood had been thinned out, so it wasn't cool

and dark as I expected; the air was still warm and the rays of the

sinking sun shone in from behind us. The tree trunks glowed redly.

There was a hot, resinous smell instead of the scent of bluebells- the only ones left were shriveled and going to seed.

And instead of a still, waking feeling there was a choking

excitement.

Stephen didn't say any of the things I once invented for him; neither of us spoke a word. I led the way all the time and reached the little grassy clearing in the middle of the wood before he did. There I

turned and waited for him. He came closer and closer to me, then stood still, staring at me questioningly. I nodded my head and then he took me in his arms and kissed me, very gently. It didn't mean a thing to

me--I know I didn't kiss him in return. But suddenly he changed, and

kissed me more and more, not gently at all-and I changed, too, and

wanted him to go on and on. I didn't even stop him when he pulled my

dress down over my shoulder. It was he who stopped in the end.

"Don't let me, don't let me!" he gasped, and pushed me away so violently that I nearly fell over. As I staggered backwards I had a

wild feeling of terror and the minute I regained my balance I plunged blindly back through the wood. He called after me, "Mind your

eyes--it's all right, I'm not coming after you." But I went on

thrusting my way through the larches, shielding my face with my arm. I ran all the way to the castle and dashed up the kitchen stairs meaning to lock myself in my room, but I slipped when I was half-way up,

banging my knee badly, and then I burst into tears and just lay there, sobbing. The awful thing is that something in me hoped that if I

stayed there long enough he would come in and see how wretched I was-

though I still can't make out why I wanted him to.

After a little while, I heard him at the kitchen door.

"Cassandra, please stop crying," he called.

"I wasn't coming in, but when I heard you Please, please stop."

I still went on. He came to the foot of the stairs.

I began to pull myself up by the banisters, still crying. He said:

"But it's all right- really it is. There's nothing wrong in it if we love each other."

I turned on him fiercely: "I don't love you. I hate you."

And then I saw the look in his eyes and realized how dreadful it all

was for him--until then I had only been thinking of my own misery. I

gasped out, "No, no- I don't mean that but .... Oh, I'll never be able to explain." And then I dashed through to my room and locked both doors. I was just going to fling myself on the bed when I caught

sight of Simon's present, on the window-seat. I went over, closed the gramophone part and lay with my head and arms on it. And for the first time in my life I wished I were dead.

When it was quite dark I pulled myself together enough to light a

candle and begin to go wretchedly to bed. A few minutes later, there

was a knock on the door to the landing and Stephen called out:

"I don't want to come in, but please read the note I'm pushing through to you." I called back "All right," and saw the note coming under the door. As I picked it up I heard his footsteps going downstairs, and

then the noise of the front door shutting.

He had written:

DEAREST CASSANDRA

Please do not be unhappy. It will come right. It is just that you are so young. I forget that sometimes, because you are so clever. I

cannot explain because I think it would make you feel worse and anyway I do not know how. But there was nothing wrong happened. It was all

my fault. It you forgive me for shocking you so, please write YES on a piece of paper and put it under my door. I am going out now and will

not come back until your light is out so you need not be frightened of meeting me. And I will go to work before you are up in the morning.

We won't talk about it--anyway, not for a long time. You say when.

Truly it is aa right, With love from X X X X X X but not until you want them.

On a separate sheet he had written: "Perhaps this will help you to understand. Of course it is only for when we are married"--and then he had copied out four lines from "Love's Philosophy."

Nothing in the world is single, All things by a law divine In one

another's being mingle-Why not I with thine his By Percy Bysshe

Shelley. (born t79, died r82.) I guessed he had put Shelley's name and dates so that I wouldn't think he was stealing poetry again. Oh,

Stephen--I know so well why you used to steal it! I long and long to

express my love for Simon and nothing of my own is worthy.

I wrote YES and put it under his door. I couldn't bear not to-and, of course, it was true in a way; I did forgive him. But it let him

believe a lie- that I was upset just because he had shocked me.

Since then, we haven't been alone once. We talk fairly naturally in

front of the others, but I never look straight at him. I suppose he

just thinks I am shy.

Of course the honest thing would be to tell him it will never any good but, even if I could bear to hurt him so, I doubt if I could convince him without owning that I care for someone else because I certainly

showed every sign of its being some good while he was making love to

me. Oh, why did I let him his Let him his You encouraged him, my girl!

But why, why? When my whole heart was longing for Simon! Perhaps I

could understand myself better if I didn't so loathe remembering

it--even now I haven't quite put down everything that happened.

I know this: asking him to go into the wood was a wicked thing, wicked to him and wicked to myself. Truly, being so sorry for him had

something to do with it, but it was mostly sheer wickedness.

And it was only due to Stephen that it didn't turn out much wickeder.

I have really sinned. I am going to pause now, and sit here on the

mound repenting in deepest shame ...... Oh dear, that was a great

mistake! My mind wandered from repenting to thinking it wouldn't have been sin if Stephen had been Simon. And changing them over has made me realize more and more how I have spoilt the memory of Simon's kiss. Oh, how can I face my wretched future his I shall have to be Rose's

bridesmaid, see her living with Simon at Scoatney year after year,

watch him worshipping her. And how am I going to hide my feelings,

when I see them together?

If only I could go away! But the one thing I live for is to see Simon again.

I have just remembered I once wrote that I didn't envy Rose, that I

thought a happy marriage might be dull.

Heavens, what a fool I was! ...... Father is cycling along the lane,

after spending the day at Scoatney again, and the boys will be home any minute now. I suppose I must go down and get tea; tinned salmon would cheer me up most, I think. It is most strange and wretched coming back to the present after being in this journal so long--I have been writing all day with only one break when I took Heloise indoors for her dinner and gave myself a very few cold sausages.

One of my worst longings to cry has come over me.

I am going to run down the mound grinning and singing to fight it

off.

Nine o'clock--written in bed.

Something has happened. Oh, I know I mustn't build on it--but I know I am building.

While we were at tea, a telegram came for Stephen from Leda Fox-Cotton; she wants him to go up to London next week-end. So he went back to the farm to ask if they can spare him on Saturday morning. As soon as he

had gone out, I turned off his wireless and went upstairs to play

Simon's--I never play it when Stephen is in the house. Thomas came

too, and asked me to put the Bach Preludes and Fugues on the

gramophone--he particularly likes them. We lay on the beds listening

companionably. It seems to me that Thomas has been getting much more

grown-up and intelligent lately. He was always bright about his school work, but I never found him interesting to talk to. Now he often

astonishes me.

Perhaps all the good food he has had lately has flown to his brain.

After we had played the Bach records he suddenly said:

"Do you remember Rose wishing on the stone head?"

I asked what on earth had made him think of that.

"Oh, listening to Simon's gramophone, I suppose--it's part of the difference the Cottons have made to our lives. It never struck me

before that Rose wanted to sell herself to the Devil, wished and then in they walked."

I stared at him.

"But Rose isn't selling herself --she's in love with Simon. She told me so and you know she never lies."

"That's true," said Thomas.

"Then perhaps she managed to kid herself--because I know she isn't in love. And she's all wrong for Simon."

"But how can you possibly know that she isn't in love?"

"Well, for one thing, she hardly ever mentions Simon. Harry's sister's in love and she never stops talking about her fiance. Harry and I make bets about it. That last week-end I stayed there she mentioned him

fifty-one times."

"That's nonsense," I said.

"Rose happens to be more reticent."

"Reticent? Rose? Why, she always talks her head off about anything she's keen on. Do you know that in the letter I had from her there

isn't one word about Simon ?"

"When did you have a letter?" I asked.

"Couldn't I see it?"

He said he had happened to meet the postman in the lane a few days

ago.

"And I didn't show you the letter because she asked me not to--but for a very silly reason, so I don't see why I shouldn't.

I'll get it now."

It was a most peculiar letter. There was certainly nothing about Simon in it--but there was nothing about anyone else, not even Rose herself, really. It was just one enormous list of things that had been bought

for her and how much everything cost. At the end, she wrote: "I would rather you didn't show this to Cassandra, because it seems awful that I have so many lovely things when she has so few.

You won't be envious as you are not a girl And it is nice to be able to tell someone."

"And I bet I know why she made that list," said Thomas.

"It was to convince herself that marrying for money is worth it.

Oh, I wouldn't worry about it too much; women are always marrying for money, you know. Anyway, it's a godsend for us, all right, even if

it's a bit of a devil send for Rose."

"And what about Simon ?" I demanded.

"Simon? Oh, he's past help. Do you remember our last visit to

Scoatney -before they all went up to London?

He mentioned Rose's name forty-two times while we were walking round

the stables--I counted. The horses must have been sick of the sound of her."

I told him he hadn't any real evidence about Rose's feelings; but a

wild hope was rising in my heart--for surely it is strange that there is nothing about Simon in her letter, surely one wants to write about the person one is in love with his Why, I even write Simon's name on

scraps of paper! (and then get fits of nerves that I haven't really

torn them up.) After Thomas had gone off to do his homework, I got out the only letter Rose has written to me. At first it sent my hopes down to zero--for what could be more definite than: "It's so wonderful that I can be in love with Simon as well as everything else." But suppose she really is "kidding herself," as Thomas suggested his There is so little about Simon. And part of the letter seems so sad--she writes of loneliness, of having to sit in the bathroom until she cheers up.

Heavens, if I had Simon I could never be lonely!

I have been lying in bed trying to imagine the kind of letter I would have written had I been Rose. I don't think I would have said much

about my deepest feelings--I can quite understand Rose keeping those to herself. But I know I would have said which dresses Simon liked, what he thought about theatres-I know he would have been the most important thing in the letter.

Am I making it all up--believing what I want to believe? And even if

she doesn't love him, I know he loves her. But perhaps if she gave him up ...... Oh, it is so hot in this room! I dar en open the window wide in case Heloise takes a flying leap out of it--one of her suitors, the sheep-dog from Four Stones, is prowling round the castle. Heloise,

darling, he would be a most unsuitable match. I wonder if he has gone

...... No, he hasn't. There are two dogs now, just the other side of

the moat; I can see four eyes glowing in the darkness.

I feel terribly sorry for love-lorn dogs.

I can't say Heloise is minding much, though--she is looking rather smug

...... I have just decided what to do. Somehow I have got to find out the truth. If Rose really loves him I will never try to take him from her, even in my thoughts. I will go away--perhaps to college, as she

suggested. But I must know the truth. I must see her.

I will go to London with Stephen on Saturday.

XIV

I AM BACK. It wasn't any good.

Nothing will ever be the same again between Rose and me.

All the time that Stephen and I were cycling to Scoatney station very early yesterday, I kept remembering the start of my last trip to

London, when she was with me. I found myself talking to her as she was then; even asking her advice about what I should say to the new Rose.

The Rose with the thousand-pound trousseau seemed an utterly different person from the Rose in the skimpy white suit who set out with me that bright April morning. How fresh the countryside was then! It was

green yesterday, after the rain, but there was no hopeful, beginning

feeling. The sun was hot, and though I was glad the bad weather was

over, I found it rather glaring. High summer can be pitiless to the

low spirited.

Being alone with Stephen was far less difficult than I had expected.

We talked very little and only about the most ordinary things. I felt guilty towards him and, most unfairly, slightly annoyed with him

because I did. I resented being worried about him on top of everything else.

While we were waiting at the station, Heloise arrived, exhausted

--having eluded Thomas and raced after our bicycles. She is out of

purdah now, and we didn't like to leave her on the platform, because

once when we did that she stowed away on the next train and ended up at King's Crypt police station. So Stephen got her a dog-ticket and the

stationmaster gave her a long drink and found some string to make a

leash. She behaved beautifully on the journey, except that after we

changed into the London train she took a little boy's cake away from

him. I quickly thanked him for giving it to her and he took my word

for it that he had meant to.

Stephen insisted on escorting me all the way to Park Lane. We arranged to telephone each other about what train we would go home by, and then he dashed off to St. John's Wood.

I walked Heloise round the block of flats, then went in. It was a most palatial place with bouncy carpets and glittering porters and a lift

you work yourself. There is a queer, irrevocable feeling when you have pressed the button and start to go up.

Heloise got claustrophobia and tried to climb the padded leather walls.

It didn't do them any good.

I have never seen any place look so determinedly quiet as the passage leading to the flat; it was hard to believe anyone lived behind the

shining front doors. When Mrs.

Cotton's was opened to me it came as quite a shock.

I asked for Rose and told the maid who I was.

"They're all out," she said.

I suddenly realized I ought to have let them know I was coming.

"When will they be back, please ?" I asked.

"Madam said six-thirty--in time to dress for dinner. Won't you come in, miss ?"

She offered to get water for Heloise, who was panting histrionically, and asked if I would like anything. I said perhaps some milk and might I tidy up his She showed me into Rose's bedroom. It was superb- the

carpet was actually white; it seemed awful to walk on it. Everything

was white or cream, except a great bunch of red roses in a marble vase on the bedside table. By it was a card sticking out of an envelope

with "Good morning, darling," on it, in Simon's writing. While I was staring at the roses the maid came back with my milk, and water for

Heloise; then left us alone.

Rose's bathroom looked as if it had never been used--even her

toothbrush was hidden away. She had said in her letter that there were clean towels every day, but I hadn't visualized there being so many-three sizes, and the most fetching monogrammed face cloths When I had washed, I went back to the bedroom--and found Heloise blissfully

relaxed on the white quilted bedspread; she did look nice. I took off my shoes and lay down beside her, trying to think out what I had better do. The scent of the roses was most beautiful.

I saw that it would be hopeless to talk to Rose if she didn't get back until so late; I needed to go slow and be tactful, and there would be no time for that either before or after dinner, even if waited until

the nine-thirty train. I wondered if I could find her surely she would come back if she knew I was at the flat his I rang for the maid, but

when she came she had no idea where they had all gone.

"Wouldn't anyone know?" I said desperately.

"Well, we could try Mr. Neil--though we haven't seen much of him lately." She rang up his hotel; but Neil was out. Then I wondered if the Fox-Cottons could help, and we got their number.

Leda Fox-Cotton didn't sound at all pleased to talk to me.

"You silly child, why didn't you warn them ?" she said.

"No, of course I don't know where they are. Wait a minute, I'll ask Aubrey.

Topaz might have mentioned something to him."

She was back in a minute.

"He only knows that Topaz will be home this evening--because he's calling for her. I suppose you'd better lunch with us--you'll have to wait till two, though, because I'm having a long morning with Stephen.

I've got to take him to some film people this afternoon. You can amuse yourself for an hour or so, can't you his Get a taxi at half-past

one."

I thought of refusing, but I did want to see her house and studio --and have another look at her and her husband; it sounded as if Topaz was

very thick with him. So I thanked her and accepted.

After I stopped hearing her bleating voice, I told myself that it was really very kind of her to ask me and that I ought to get over my

prejudice against her.

"That'll be nice for you," said the maid, "though Cook would have given you some lunch, of course. Let's see, you've got an hour and a half to put in--I expect you'd like to look at some shops."

But I didn't fancy lugging Heloise round crowded streets, so I said I would just walk in Hyde Park.

"Your frock's quite a bit creased, miss," she told me.

"I could press it, if you like."

I had a look at myself in Rose's long glass.

It is strange what surroundings can do to clothes--I had washed and

ironed my green dress the day before and thought it very nice, but in Rose's room it seemed cheap and ordinary. And lying on the bed in it

hadn't helped matters. But I didn't like to take it off to be

pressed, because my underclothes were so old and darned, so I thanked the maid and told her I wouldn't bother.

It was hot walking in the Park so I sat down on the grass under some

trees. Heloise rolled and then enticed me with waving paws to tickle

her; but I was too lazy to make a good job of it so she turned over and went to sleep. I leaned back against a tree-trunk and gazed around

me.

It struck me that this was the first time I had ever been on my own in London. Normally, I should have enjoyed getting the "feel" of it--you never quite do until you have been alone in a place-and even in my

anxious state of mind it was pleasant sitting there quietly, looking at the distant scarlet 'buses, the old cream-painted houses in Park Lane and the great new blocks of flats with their striped sun-blinds. And

the feel of the Park itself was most strange and interesting--what I

noticed most was its separateness; it seemed to be smiling and amiable, but somehow aloof from the miles and miles of London all around. At

first I thought this was because it belonged to an older London-

Victorian, eighteenth century, earlier than that. And then, as I

watched the sheep peacefully nibbling the grass, it came to me that

Hyde Park has never belonged to any London- that it has always been, in spirit, a stretch of the countryside;

and that it thus links the Londons of all periods together most

magically- by remaining forever unchanged at the heart of the

ever-changing town.

After I heard a clock strike quarter-past one, I went out to Oxford

Street and found a nice open taxi. It was Heloise's first through

London and she barked almost continuously-the driver said it saved

blowing his horn.

I had never been to St. John's Wood before; it is a fascinating with

quiet, tree-lined roads and secret-looking houses, most of them old--so that the Fox-Cottons" scarlet front door seemed startling.

Aubrey Fox-Cotton came out into the hall to meet me.

"Leda's still busy," he said, in his beautiful, affected voice. By daylight his narrow face looked even grayer than it did that night at Scoatney. He is a most shadowy person and yet there is something

unforgettable about his dim elegance. Heloise took rather a fancy to

him, but he just said, "Comic creature," and waved a vague hand at her.

He gave me some sherry and talked politely, but without really noticing me, until it was well after two. At last he said we would "drift over"

and rout the others out.

We went through the back garden to a building that looked if it had

originally been a stable. Once inside, we were faced with a black

velvet curtain stretching right across. There was a little spiral

staircase in one corner.

"Go on up," he whispered, "and keep quiet in case it's a psychological moment."

At the top of the staircase was a gallery from which we could look down into the studio. It was brilliantly lit, with all the lights focussed on a platform at the far end. Stephen was standing there, in a Greek

tunic, against a painted background of a ruined temple.

He looked quite wonderful. I couldn't see Leda Fox-Cotton anywhere but I could hear her.

"Your mouth's too rigid," she called out.

"Moisten your lips, then don't quite close them. And look up a

fraction."

Stephen did as she said, and then his head jerked and he went bright

scarlet.

"What the hell was began Leda Fox-Cottonthen she realized he had seen someone in the gallery, and went and stood where she could see us

herself.

"Well, that's that," she remarked.

"I shan't get anything more out of him now. He's been self-conscious all morning--I suppose it's that tunic. Go and change, Stephen."

She was all in black--black trousers, black shirt- and very hot and

greasy, but there was a hard-working look about her which made the

greasiness less unpleasant than it had seemed at Scoatney.

While we were waiting for Stephen, I asked if I could see some of her work and she took me through into what must have been the stable of the next-door house. It was furnished as a sitting-room, with great divans piled with cushions. Everything was black or white. On the walls were enlargements of photographs she had taken, including one of a

magnificent, quite naked Negro, much larger than life. It reached from the floor up to the high ceiling and was terrifying.

There was a huge framed head of Stephen waiting to be put up.

I admired it and said how beautifully he photographed.

"He's the only boy I ever had the chance to do who was beautiful without looking effeminate," she said.

"And his physique's as good as his head. I wish the silly child would strip for meI'd like to put him up beside my Negro."

Then she handed me a whole sheaf of Stephen's photographs, all

wonderful. The queer thing was that they were exactly like him and yet he seemed quite a different person in them--much more definite,

forceful, intelligent. Not one of them had that look of his that I

used to call "daft." While we were lunching (on a mirror-topped table) I wondered if it hadn't perhaps gone in real life. He was certainly

much more grownup, and surprisingly at ease with the Fox-Cottons.

But he still wasn't--well, so much of a person as in the photographs.

The food was lovely--so was everything in the place, for that matter, in an ultra-modern way.

"All wrong for this old house," said Aubrey (they told me to call them by their Christian names), after I had been admiring the furniture.

"But I prefer modern furniture in London and Leda won't leave her studios and take a flat. Modernity in London, antiquity in the

country- that's what I like. How I wish Simon would let me rent

Scoatney!"

"Perhaps Rose will fall in love with New York when they go there for their honeymoon," said Leda.

"Are they going?" I asked, as casually as I could.

"Oh, Rose was talking about it," said Leda, vaguely.

"It would be a nice time to go, if they get married in September. New York's lovely in the autumn."

The most awful wave of depression hit me. I suddenly knew that nothing would stop the wedding, that I had come up to London on a wild-goose

chase; I think I had begun to know it when I saw Simon's roses in the flat. I longed to be back at the castle so that I could crawl into the four-poster and cry.

Leda was talking to Stephen about posing for her again the next

morning.

"But we've got to go home today" I said quickly.

""Oh, nonsense- you can sleep at the flat," said Leda.

"There isn't room," I said.

"And, anyway, I must get back."

"But Stephen needn't surely? You can go by yourself."

"No, she can't--not late at night," said Stephen.

"Of course I'll take you if you want to go, Cassandra." His Leda gave him the swiftest, shrewdest look- it was as if she had suddenly sized up how he felt about me, wasn't pleased about it, but wasn't going to argue with him.

"Well, that's a bore," she said, then turned to me again.

"I'm sure they can fix you up at the flat somehow or other. Why can't you stay ?"

I longed to tell her to mind her own business. But as she was my

hostess, I just said politely that Father and Thomas needed me.

"But, good lord," she began- then took in my determined expression, shrugged her shoulders and said: "Well, if you change your mind, ring up."

Luncheon was over then. As we walked across the hall, Heloise was

lying on the black marble floor, very full of food. Leda stopped and

looked at her.

"Nice--her reflection in the marble," she said.

"I

wonder if I'll photograph her? No--there isn't time to rig up the

lights in here," She didn't give a flicker of a smile when Heloise thumped her tail. It struck me that I never had seen her smile.

While she was dressing to take Stephen to the film studios, I felt it would be polite to talk to Aubrey about his work and ask to see

pictures of it. Of course I don't know anything about modern

architecture, but it looked very good to me. It is odd that such a

desiccated man should be so clever--and odd that anyone who sounds as silly as Leda does can take such magnificent photographs. When she

came downstairs she was wearing a beautiful black dress and hat, with dark red gloves and an antique ruby necklace; but she still looked

quite a bit greasy.

I had decided to go back to the flat in case Rose came home earlier

than the maid expected, so Leda dropped me there on their way to the

film studios. Stephen arranged to call for me at half-past eight.

Leda had one last nag at me: "You are a trying child, making him take you home tonight. He'll have to come straight back to London if he

lands this job."

"He doesn't have to go with me unless he wants to." I don't think I said it rudely.

"Anyway, good luck with the job, Stephen."

As they drove off I started to walk Heloise round the block of flats, but I hadn't got far before the car stopped and Stephen came running

back to me.

"Are you sure you want me to take this job if I can get it?" he asked.

I said of course I was, and that we should all be very proud of him.

"All right- if you're sure his As I watched him racing back to the car I had a wrongful feeling of pride--not so much because he was devoted to me as at the thought of Leda having to realize it.

I spent the afternoon in the drawing-room of the flat. I read a

little--there were some very serious American magazines, not bit like the ones Miss Marcy had. But most of the time, I thought. And what I

thought about most was luxury. I had realized before that it is more

than just having things; it makes very air feel different. And I felt different, breathing that air: relaxed lazy, still sad but with the

edge taken off the sadness.

Perhaps the effect wears off in time, or perhaps you don't notice you are born to it, but it does seem to me that the climate of riches must always be a little dulling to the senses.

Perhaps it takes the edge off joy as well as off sorrow.

And though I cannot honestly say I would ever turn my back on any

luxury I could come by, I do feel there is something a bit in it.

Perhaps that makes it all the more enjoyable.

At five o'clock the kind maid brought iced tea and sandwiches--and

biscuits for Heloise, but she much preferred sandwiches. After that, I fell asleep on the sofa.

And suddenly they were all back--the room was full of laughing and

talking. All three of them were in black-apparently most smart London women wear black in hot weather; it seemed unsuitable, but they looked very nice in it.

And they so pleased to see me--Rose simply hugged me.

Everyone was determined that I should stay for the weekend.

Rose insisted her bed was big enough for two and when I said we should kick each other she said:

"All right--I'll sleep on the floor but stay you must."

"Yes, do, dear," said Mrs. Cotton.

"And then we can see about your bridesmaid's dress on Monday

morning."

"If only I'd known you were here, I'd have rushed home," cried Rose.

"We've been to the dullest matinee.

She was fanning herself with the program. Three months ago no matinee in the world would have been dull to her.

Topaz urged me to stay, but in the same breath asked if Father would be all right without me. I told her exactly what food I had left for him and Thomas.

"We'll call up Scoatney and have a cold roast of beef sent over,"" said Mrs. Cotton.

"They can eat their way through that."

Then Simon came in and just to see him again was so wonderful that I

suddenly felt quite happy.

"Yes, of course she must stay," he said, "and come out with us tonight."

Rose said she could lend me a dress.

"And you telephone Neil, Simon, and say he's to come and dance with her. You shall have a bath in my bathroom, Cassandra."

She put her arm round me and walked me along to her bedroom.

The quiet flat had come to life. Doors and windows were open, the maid was drawing up the sunbils, a cool breeze was blowing in from the Park, smelling of dry grass and petrol-- a most exciting, Londony smell-which mixed with a glorious smell of the dinner cooking.

"The kitchen door must have been left open," said Mrs. Cotton to the maid, quite crossly. As if anyone could mind the smell of a really

good dinner!

While I was in the bath, Rose telephoned the Fox-Cottons" house for me--I was afraid Leda would answer and I didn't fancy telling her

myself that I had changed my mind. Then I felt it would be most unkind not to ask Stephen how his interview had gone, so I yelled to Rose that I would like to talk to him.

"He's in the studio with Leda," Rose called back.

"Aubrey says he'll ask him to telephone you later."

After she had hung up she told me that Stephen had got the film job.

"Aubrey says Leda's terribly excited about it- Stephen's to have ten pounds a day for at least five days. He doesn't have to say

anything--just keep wandering about with some goats. It's symbolic or something."

"Gracious, fancy Stephen earning fifty pounds!"

"He'll earn more than that before Leda's finished with him," said.

Rose.

"She's crazy about him."

When I came back from the bath there was an evening dress:

laid out for me- again, the fashionable black!

Though it turned out that Rose had only chosen that dress for me

because it was her shortest. It fitted me very well, just clearing

the ground, and was utterly luxurious- though Rose said, "Oh, it's only one of the ready-made ones, bought to tide me over."

As I finished dressing, I heard Neil's voice in the hall.

"You're complimented," said Rose, "he hasn't been near us weeks. Dear me, I hope he won't put poison in my soup."

I said it was a pity they didn't get on with each other.

"Well, it's not my fault," said Rose.

"I'm perfectly willing to friends with him- for Simon's sake. I've tried again and again, I'll try tonight, just to show you. But it

won't be any good."

When she said "for Simon's sake" I thought: "Of course she loves him. I was an idiot to believe Thomas." Yet I went on feeling I kept saying to myself: "I've seen him- in a minute I shall see him again. That's almost enough."

Neil knocked on the bedroom door and called:

"Where's friend Cassandra?"

Rose wasn't quite ready so I went out to him alone.

I had forgotten how very nice he is. We went into the drawing-room and Simon said: "Why, she's grown up!"

"And grown up very prettily," said Mrs.

Cotton.

"We must go shopping next week, my dear."

I think I did look reasonably nice in Rose's dress.

Everyone was wonderfully kind to me I perhaps they felt that I had been a bit neglected. When Rose came in she put her arm through mine and

said: "She must stay a long, long time, mustn't she? Father will just have to look after himself."

Topaz would never have passed that, but she had gone out with Aubrey

Fox-Cotton.

After dinner (four courses; the jellied soup was marvelous), they

decided where we should dance. Mrs. Cotton wouldn't come she said she was going to stay at home and reread Proust.

"I started last night," she told Simon, "and I'm longing to get back to him. This time I'm making notes--trying to keep track of my favorite

paragraphs, as you did."

Then they began a conversation about Proust that I longed to listen to, but Rose swept me out to her bedroom to get ready.

"The way those two talk about books!" she said.

"And without ever mentioning an author I've read a line of."

It was fascinating strolling along Park Lane to the hotel where the

dance was, with the sky deep blue beyond the street lamps. But after

the first few steps I realized that I was in for trouble with Rose's

satin shoes--they had seemed to fit quite well when I put them on, but I found that they slipped off when I walked unless I held my feet

stiffly. Dancing proved to be worse than walking- after one turn

around the room I knew it was hopeless.

"I shall just have to watch," I told Neil.

He said, "Not on your life," and then led me to a deserted corridor just off the ballroom. It must have been intended as a sitting-out

place--there were little alcoves let into the pink brocaded walls --but Neil said people hardly ever came there.

"Now take those darn shoes off," he told me, "and I'll take mine off, too, in case I step on you."

It was the queerest feeling, dancing or the thick carpet, but I quite enjoyed it. When the music stopped, we sat in one of the alcoves and

talked.

"I'm glad you came to London," he said.

"If you hadn't, I might not have seen you again. I'm going back home a week today."

I was most astonished.

"You mean California his Aren't you going to stay for the wedding his I thought you were to be best man."

"Simon will have to get someone else. I can't miss this chance.

I've been offered a partnership in a ranch--got the cable today.

They need me at once."

lust then we saw Rose and Simon coming out of the ballroom, obviously looking for us.

"Don't mention it, will you?" said Neil, quickly.

"I want to break it to Mother before I tell the others. She isn't going to be pleased."

The music started again soon after Rose and Simon joined us.

She turned to Neil and said in a really nice voice: "Will you dance this with me?"

I saw then that she had been right in thinking it was hopeless to be

friends with him--for a moment I thought he would actually refuse to

dance. But in the end he just said "Sure, if you want me to," quite politely but without the flicker of a smile, and they went off

together, leaving me alone with Simon.

We talked first about Rose; he was worried in case so much shopping had tired her.

"I wish we could be married at once and get out of London," he said.

"But both she and Mother insist on waiting for the trousseau."

I had thought myself that Rose seemed a little less alive than usual, but nothing like so tired as he, himself, did.

He was paler than usual and his manner was so quiet. It made me care

for him more than ever--I wanted so terribly to be good to him.

After we had taken a great interest in Rose for a very long time he

asked about Father and we discussed the possibility that he was doing some work and keeping it quiet.

"He was most odd when he stayed in the flat a few weeks ago," said Simon.

"Mother told me he went into the kitchen and borrowed all the cookery books."

I began to have a desperate feeling that time was rushing by and we

weren't talking about anything I could treasure for the future --he was being charming and kind, as he always is, but he hardly seemed to

notice me as a person. I longed to say something amusing but couldn't think of anything, so I tried to be intelligent.

"Do you think I ought to read Proust?" I asked.

Apparently that was more amusing than it was intelligent, because it

made him laugh.

"Well, I wouldn't say it was a duty," he said, "but you could have a shot at it. I'll send you Swann" Way."

Then I talked about his birthday present to me, and he said what a nice letter I had written to thank him.

"I hope you're borrowing all the records you want from Scoatney," he told me.

When he said that I suddenly saw the pavilion, lit by moonlight and

candlelight--and then, by the most cruel coincidence, the band, which had been playing a medley of tunes, began "Lover."

I felt myself blushing violently- never have I known such

embarrassment. I sprang up and ran towards a mirror, some way along

the corridor.

"What's the matter ?" Simon called after me.

"An eyelash in my eye," I called back.

He asked if he could help but I said I could manage, and fidgeted with my handkerchief until the blush died down--I don't believe he ever

noticed it. As I walked back to him he said:

"It's odd how that dress changes you. I don't know that I approve of your growing up. Oh, I shall get used to it." He smiled at me.

"But you were perfect as you were."

It was the funny little girl he had liked- the comic child playing at Midsummer rites; she was the one he kissed. Though I don't think I

shall ever quite know why he did it.

After that I talked easily enough, making him laugh quite a bit--I

could see he was liking me again. But it wasn't my present self

talking at all; I was giving an imitation of myself as I used to be. I was very "consciously naive." Never, never was I that with him before; however I may have sounded, I always felt perfectly natural. But I

knew, as I sat there amusing him while the band played "Lover," that many things which had felt natural to me before I first heard it would never feel natural again.

It wasn't only the black dress that had made me grow up.

Rose and Neil came back when the music stopped; then Neil went off to order us some drinks.

"That was a good tune that last one," she remarked.

"What's it called ?"

"I'm afraid I didn't notice it," said Simon.

"Nor I," I said.

Rose sat down in the opposite alcove and put her feet up.

"Tired?" Simon asked, going over to her.

She said: "Yes, very," and didn't offer to make room for him; so he sat on the floor beside her.

"Would you like me to take you home as soon as we've had our drinks ?"

he asked, and she said she would.

Neil would have stayed on with me, but I said we couldn't keep dancing without shoes in that corridor.

"It does begin to feel like a padded cell," he admitted.

I shall never forget it--the thick carpet, the brocade-covered the

bright lights staring back from the gilt mirrors;

everything was so luxurious--and so meaningless, so lifeless.

When we reached the entrance to the flats Neil said he wouldn't come

up, but he walked along to the lift with us and managed so that he and I were well behind the others.

"This looks like being good-bye for us," he said.

I felt a sadness quite separate from my personal ton of misery.

"But we'll meet again someday, won't we?"

"Why, surely. You must come to America."

"Won't you ever come back here?"

He said he doubted it--then laughed and added:

"Well, maybe I will, when I'm a rich old man."

"Why do you dislike us so, Neil ?"

"I don't dislike you," he said quickly.

"Oh, I don't dislike any thing. But I'm just all wrong over here."

Then the others called that the lift was waiting for me, so we shook

hands quickly. I hated to think it might be years and years before I

saw him again.

There was a message from Stephen for me at the flat --I had quite

forgotten that he was going to telephone me. Rose read aloud:

"For Miss C. Mortmain from Mr. S. Colly. The gentleman asked to say that he was completely at your service if required."

"I do call that a nice message," said Simon.

"Hadn't you better call him back?"

"Oh, leave it till the morning," said Rose, "and let's go to bed.

I've hardly had a chance to talk to you yet."

Just then Topaz came out of her bedroom and said she wanted to speak to me.

"Can't you wait until tomorrow?" asked Rose.

Topaz said she didn't see why she should.

"It's only half-past ten and I came back early on purpose."

"Well, hurry up, anyway," said Rose.

Topaz took me up to the roof-garden.

"You never know if you're going to be overheard in that flat," she said. It was nice on the roof, there were lots of little trees in

tubs, and some pretty garden furniture. No one but us was about. We

sat down on a large swinging seat and I waited for her to say something important;

but, as I might have guessed, she only wanted to talk about Father.

"I hardly had a minute with him when he stayed here," she said.

"My room's too small to share. And Mrs.

Cotton kept him up talking very late both nights."

I asked if she was still worried about them.

"Oh, not in the way I was. Anyway, there's certainly nothing on her side. I see now it's not the man she's interested in, but the famous

man--if he'll oblige her by being one again.

She hopes be will and she wants to have a hand in it. So does

Simon."

"Well, what's wrong with that?" I said.

"You know they mean it kindly."

"Simon does; he's interested in Mortmain's work for its own sake --and for Mortmain's sake. But I think Mrs.

Cotton's just a celebrity collector--she even values me now that she's seen some of the paintings of me."

"She asked you to stay with her before she saw them," I said.

I like Mrs. Cotton; and her kindness to our family has been little

short of fabulous.

"Go on--tell me I'm unjust." Topaz heaved one of her groaning sighs, then added: "I know I am, really. But she gets on my nerves until I could scream. Why doesn't she get on Mortmain's? It's a mystery to

me. Talk, talk, talk--and never did I see such vitality.

I don't believe it's normal for a woman of her age to be so healthy.

If you ask me, it's glandular."

I began to laugh, then saw she was perfectly serious; "glandular" has always been a popular word with Topaz.

"Well, come back to the castle and take a rest," I suggested.

"That's what I wanted to ask you about. Has Mortmain showed the

slightest sign of needing me?"

I tried to think of a tactful way to say "No."

Fortunately, she went straight on: "I've got to be needed,

Cassandra--I always have been. Men have either painted me, or been in love with me, or just plain ill-treated me- some men have to do a lot of ill-treating, you know, it's good for their work; but one way or

another, I've always been needed.

I've got to inspire people, Cassandra--it's my job in life." I told her then that I had a faint hope that Father was working.

"Do you mean I've inspired him just by keeping away from him?" We both roared with laughter. Topaz's sense of humor is intermittent, but good when it turns up. When we had calmed down, she said: "What do you think of Aubrey Fox-Cotton ?"

"Not much," I said.

"Does he need inspiring? He seems to be doing pretty well as it is."

"He could do greater work.

He feels he could."

"You mean, if you both got divorces and married each other ?"

"Well, not exactly," said Topaz. I suddenly felt it was an important moment and wondered what on earth I could say to influence her. It was no use pretending that Father needed her, because I knew she would find out he didn't before she had been home half an hour.

At last I said: "I suppose it wouldn't be enough that Thomas and I need you ?" She looked pleased -then came out with a dreadful Topazism:

"Oh, darling! But can't you see that art comes before the individual?"

Inspiration came to me.

"Then you can't leave Father," I said.

"Oh, Topaz-don't you see that whether he misses you or not, a shock like that might wreck him completely? Just imagine his biographer

writing: "Mortmain was about to start on the second phase of his career, when the faithlessness of his artist-model wife shattered the fabric of his life. We shall never know what was lost to the world

through this worthless young woman " and you never would know, Topaz, because if Father never wrote another line after you left him, you'd

always feel it might be your fault." She was staring at me--I could see I was making a magnificent impression. Luckily it hadn't struck

her that no one will write Father's biography unless he does do some

more work.

"Can't you see how posterity would misjudge you?" I piled it on.

"While if you stick to him, you may be "this girl, beautiful as a Blake angel, who sacrificed her own varied talents to ensure Mortmain's

renaissance."" I stopped, fearing I had overdone it, but she swallowed it all.

"Oh, darling--you ought to write the biography yourself," she gasped.

"I will, I will," I assured her, and wondered if she would consider staying on to inspire me; but I think she only sees herself as an

inspirer of men. Anyway, I didn't need to worry, because she said in

her most double-bass tones:

"Cassandra, you have saved me from a dreadful mistake. Thank you, thank you."

Then she collapsed on my shoulders with such force that I shot off the swinging seat.

Oh, darling Topaz! She calls Mrs.

Cotton's interest in Father celebrity collecting, and never sees that her own desire to inspire men is just another form of it--and a far

less sincere one.

For Mrs.

Cotton's main interests really are intellectual -well,

social-intellectual-while my dear beautiful stepmother's

intellectualism is very, very bogus. The real Topaz is the one who

cooks and scrubs and sews for us all. How mixed people are--how mixed and nice!

As we went down from the roof she said she would come home in ten days or a fortnight--just as soon as Macmorris finished his new portrait of her. I said how very glad I was, though it suddenly struck me how hard it would be to hide my troubles from her.

Talking to her had taken my mind off them, but as we went into the flat it was just as if they were waiting for me there.

Everyone had gone to bed. There was a line of light under Simon's

door. I thought how close to me he would be sleeping and, for some

reason, that made me more unhappy than ever. And the prospect of

seeing him again in the morning held no comfort for me;

I had found out in that glittering corridor off the ballroom that being with him could be more painful than being away from him.

Rose was sitting up in bed waiting for me. I remember noticing how

pretty her bright hair looked against the white velvet headboard.

She said: "I've put out one of my trousseau nightgowns for you."

I thanked her and hoped I wouldn't tear it--it seemed very fragile. She said there were plenty more, anyway.

"Well, now we can talk," I said, brightly-meaning "you can."

I no longer had any intention of questioning her about her feelings for Simon--of course she loved him, of course nothing would stop the

marriage, my coming to London had been an idiotic mistake.

"I don't think I want to tonight," she said.

This surprised me--she had seemed so keen on talking--but I just said:

"Well, there'll be plenty of time tomorrow."

She said she supposed so, hardly sounding enthusiastic; then asked me to put the roses in the bathroom for the night. As I went to get them, she looked down at Simon's card on the bedside table and said: "Chuck that in the wastepaper-basket, will you?"

She didn't say it casually, but with a sort of scornful resentment.

My resolution not to speak just faded away and I said:

"Rose, you don't love him."

She gave me a little ironic smile and said:

"No. Isn't it a pity?"

There it was--the thing I had hoped for! But instead of feeling glad, instead of feeling any flicker of hope, I felt angry--so angry that I didn't dare to let myself speak. I just stood staring at her until she said:

"Well? Say something."

I managed to speak quite calmly.

"Why did you lie to me that night you got engaged ?"

"I didn't. I really thought I was in love. When he kissed me-Oh, you wouldn't understand--you're too young."

I understood, all right. If Stephen had kissed me before I knew that I loved Simon, I might have made the same mistake--particularly if I had wanted to make it, as Rose did. But I went on feeling angry.

"How long have you known?" I demanded.

"Weeks and weeks, now--I found out soon after we came to London; Simon's with me so much more here. Oh, if only he wasn't so in love

with me! Can you understand what I mean? It isn't only that he wants

to make love to me--come minute we're together I can feel him asking

for love. He somehow links it with everything --if it's a particularly lovely day, if we see anything beautiful or listen to music together.

It makes me want to scream. Oh, God--I didn't mean to tell you. I

longed to----I knew it would be a relief;

but I made up my mind not to, only a few minutes ago, because I knew it would be selfish. I'm sorry you got it out of me. I can see it's

upset you dreadfully."

"That's all right," I said.

"Would you like me to tell him for you?"

"Tell him?" She stared at me.

"Oh, no wonder you're upset! Don't worry, darling--I'm still going to marry him."

"No, you're not," I told her.

"You're not going to do anything so wicked."

"Why is it suddenly wicked? You always knew I'd marry him whether I loved him or not--and you helped me all you could, without ever being sure I was in love with him."

"I didn't understand--it was just fun, like something in a book.

It wasn't real." But I knew in my heart that my conscience had always felt uneasy and I hadn't listened to it. All my unhappiness had been a judgment on me.

"Well, it's real enough now," said Rose grimly.

My own guilt made me feel less angry with her. I went and sat on the

bed and tried to speak reasonably.

"You can't do it, you know, Rose--just for clothes and jewelry and bathrooms--" "You talk as if I were doing it all for myself," she broke in on me.

"Do you know what my last thoughts have been, lying here night after night?

"Well, at least they've had enough to eat at the castle today"--why, even Heloise is putting on weight! And I've thought of you more than

anyone- of all the things I can do for you when I'm married his "Then you can stop thinking, because I won't take anything from you was

Suddenly my anger came rushing back and words began to pour out of

me.

"And you can stop pretending that you're doing it for us all--it's simply to please yourself, because you can't face poverty. You're

going to wreck Simon's life because you're greedy and cowardly was I

went on and on, in a sort of screaming whisper--all the time, I was

conscious that I might be heard and managed to stop myself shouting,

but I lost all of what I said; I can't even remember most of it. Rose never tried to interrupt --she just sat there staring at me. Suddenly a light of understanding dawned in her eyes. I stopped dead.

"You're in love with him yourself," she said.

"It only needed that."

And then she burst into choking sobs and buried her head in a pillow to stifle the noise.

"Oh, shut up," I said.

After a minute or two, she stopped roaring into the pillow and began to fish round for her handkerchief. You can't see a person do that

without helping, however angry you are, so I gave it to her-it had

fallen on the floor. She mopped up a bit, then said:

"Cassandra, I swear by everything I hold sacred that I'd give him up if I thought he'd marry you instead. Why, I'd jump at it- we'd still have money in the family and I wouldn't have to have him as husband. I

don't want Scoatney- I don't want a lot of luxury. All I ask is, not

to go back to quite such hideous poverty --I won't do that, I won't, I won't! And I'd have to, if I gave him up, because I know he wouldn't

fall in love with you. He just thinks of you as a little girl."

"What he thinks of me has nothing to do with it," I said.

"It's him I'm thinking of now, not me. You're not going to marry him without loving him."

She said: "Don't you know he'd rather have me that way than not at all

?"

I had never thought of that; but when she said it I saw that it was

true. It made me hate her more than ever. I started to tear the black dress off.

"That's right--come to bed," she said.

"Let's put the light out and talk things over quietly. Perhaps you only fancy you're in love with him--couldn't it be what's called "calf love," darling? You can't really know if you're in love until you've been made love to.

Anyway, you'll get over it when you meet other men- and I'll see that you do. Let's talk- let's try to help each other. Come to bed."

"I'm not coming to bed," I said, kicking the dress away.

"I'm going home."

"But you can't -not tonight! There are no trains."

"Then I'll sit in the station waiting-room till the morning."

"But why? "I'm not going to lie down beside you."

I was struggling into my green dress. She sprang out of bed and tried to stop me.

"Cassandra, please listen- his I told her to shut up or she would rouse the flat.

"And I warn you that if you try to stop me going, I'll rouse it--and tell them everything. Then you'll have to break your engagement."

"Oh, no, I won't--" It was the first time she had sounded angry.

"I'll tell them you're lying because you're in love with Simon."

"One way and another, we'd better not rouse the flat." I was hunting everywhere for my shoes which the maid had put away. Rose followed me round, half angry, half pleading.

"But what am I to tell them, if you leave tonight ?"

she asked.

"Don't tell them anything until the morning--then say I had a sudden fit of conscience about leaving Father alone and went by the early

train." I found my shoes at last and put them on.

"Oh, tell them what you damn well like. Anyway, I'm going."

"You're failing me- and just when I need you most desperately."

"Yes, to listen to your woes sympathetically and pat you on the back-sorry, nothing doing!" By then I was pulling all the drawers open, searching for my handbag. When I had unearthed it, I pushed past

her.

She had one more try at getting round me:

"Cassandra, I beg you to stay. If you knew how wretched I am his "Oh, go and sit in your bathroom and count your towels," I sneered at her.

""They'll cheer you up- you lying little cheat."

Then out I went, controlling myself enough to shut the door quietly.

For a second I thought she would come after me but she didn't- I

suppose she believed I really would scream out the truth and I think I might have, I was in such a blind rage.

The only light in the hall was a glimmer round the edges of the front door, from the outside passage.

I tiptoed towards it. Just as I got there, I heard a faint whimper.

Heloise!

I had completely forgotten her. The next moment she was there in the

dark with me, thumping her tail. I dragged her through the front door and raced to the lift- by a bit of luck it was there, waiting.

Once we were going down, I sat on the floor and let her put her paws

round my neck and get her ecstasy over.

She had her collar on and I used my belt as a leash-there was still

too much traffic about to let her run loose, even when we turned off

Park Lane into a quieter street. I was thankful to be out in the cool air, but after the first few minutes of relief my mind began to go over and over the scene with Rose--I kept thinking of worse things I might have said and imagining saying them. My eyes were still so full of the white bedroom that I scarcely noticed where I went; I just have a vague memory of going on and on past well-to-do houses. There was a dance

taking place in one of them and people were strolling out on to a

balcony- I dimly remember feeling sorry I was too absorbed in myself to be interested (a few months ago, it would have been splendid to imagine about). At the back of my mind I had an idea that sooner or later I

should see 'buses or an entrance to the Underground, and then I could get hack to the railway station and sit in the waiting-room. The first time I really came to earth was when I struck Regent Street.